"We are very pleased and greatful for this. But of course we must bear in mind that we're talking about a very sudden rise in popularity and we don't know how long it will last," says Helgi Hrafn Gunnarsson, MP for Iceland's Pirate Party, to mbl.is asked for his reaction to the latest opinion polls showing the Pirates as the the country's largest political party.

Recently the Icelandic government informed the European Union that they no longer considered Iceland as an EU candidate country and asked Brussels to act accordingly. The move sparked anger among the opposition and protests in the parliament square. Gunnarsson, however, says he doesn not think the Pirates' rise in popularity has anything to do with the EU. Otherwise the support would probably have gone to one of Iceland's two pro-EU parties, the Social Democratic Alliance and the Bright Future.

Gunnarsson says he thinks the increased popularity is a call for democratic reforms which the Pirate Party has been emphasising. The protests against the government's move were not about the EU itself but how the decision to stop the accession process was reached. "The only logical explanation I can think of is that this is að call for democratic reforms. And I hope all the political parties will consider this a message that democratic reforms are needed." He adds that the solution is not to replace the people in power but to reform the system and the way decisions are reached.

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