EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - The Swedish Pirate Party - a group of online radicals who back free downloading of music and films from the internet - is taking advantage of a series of high profile anti-piracy cases to stage a pan-European electoral assault for 2009's European elections.

"The battle over our privacy and the hunt on filesharers is fought down in Brussels. That is why we want to go there," the party's leader Rickard Falkvinge told EUobserver.