Sven Clement on Conversations With Christos

Clement is Luxembourg’s most-popular opposition MP, according to the latest Politmonitor.

In a direct episode, he discusses his decision to join the Pirates, geeking-out on ‘obscure internet forums’, entrepreneurship, and the role of the opposition, upholding the rule of law, and the role of media and the 4th estate in our democracy and public discourse.

Clement also states that the Pirate Party is taking action against the government, against the Ministry of Health to take a look at the contracts with vaccine producers during the Covid pandemic that he says may have “engaged the budget for many years”.

Sven Clement at RTL City during the filming of Conversations with Christos / © RTL / Luca Emering

“You feel like: I'm missing something. I want to participate a bit more. I want my voice to be heard", he says about this early interest in politics.

Clement shares that he found out about the Pirate Party on Google, whilst looking at parties to get involved in: “I googled ‘parties in Luxembourg” he says. “And so I ended up with a list of parties in Luxembourg and I went through them one by one, thinking about their programmes and the persons [involved]”.

He referenced the creation of the first Pirate Party in Sweden: “The Swedish Pirate Party entered the European Parliament in 2009, which also explains the rise of Pirate Parties across the continent in exactly that year, including Luxembourg” he says.

“We were really in a world where what people always did for centuries, for millennia, having and sharing knowledge around the campfires suddenly became illegal.”

“We had those peer to peer platforms to exchange privately with no commercial interest… and that suddenly, because of the format, became illegal.” he recalls, speaking of his more youthful years.

Sven Clement is one of 2 Pirate Party MP’s in Luxembourg’s Chamber of Deputies, and one of the youngest, and his party is currently popular in Politmonitor polls, potentially claiming up to 6 seats in October.

Christos Floros with Sven Clement at RTL City discussing the role of media in politics during the filming of RTL City. / © RTL / Luca Emering

Asked about what he would like to achieve in his political career he replied “If there's one policy that I really believe in, and that's why we worked for two years to put it into a draft law, it's about getting carbon out of the air”.

“To get companies and private households to suck out of the air, the CO2 that is already there: transform it, reuse it, recycle it so that we can achieve net zero before 2050 without necessarily changing all the stuff that we already bought in the past.” he said, adding that: “Planes, Cargolux and Luxair, they are now buying new planes: they will fly until 2050 with kerosene, and so we need to find substitutes for kerosene-like” fuels.

“I think Luxembourg could become one of the only countries that would be net positive in energy production if we would really invest into that. That's why we proposed our strategy, a project on getting every rooftop, every parking space in Luxembourg covered with solar cells. Finally, the government announced the same program in the state of the nation this year.” he said, however adding “but included nothing of that in the budget, so I'm still doubtful they really want to do it. But at least they announced that they want to go the same direction. And we do. We have a plan to finance it. We have a plan to finance our construction projects. We just want to make the world a bit of a better place.”

Christos Floros with Sven Clement at RTL City. / © RTL / Luca Emering

Watch the FULL EPISODE exclusively on RTL PLAY.

A new episode of Conversations with Christos streams every second Tuesday at 6pm on RTL Play.

On 7 March 2023, don’t miss the next conversation when Christos will sit down with Gabriel Boisante, co-lead candidate, with Maxime Miltgen, for the LSAP in this year's local elections for Luxembourg City.

Send in your questions for future guests by email to christos.floros@rtl.lu