diff --git a/debian/patches/00001-utf8_for_tests b/debian/patches/00001-utf8_for_tests
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..440ab5e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/debian/patches/00001-utf8_for_tests
@@ -0,0 +1,26 @@
+Description: Use utf8 encoding when loading tests
+ Test files are encoded in utf8, normally Python3 uses locale settings
+ and decodes, but this fails when building as locale is not set, and
+ could also be set to some unexpected value.
+ .
+ relational (2.0-1) unstable; urgency=medium
+ .
+   * New upstream release
+   * Now uses Python3
+   * Now uses PyQt5
+   * Bump standards version
+   * Recommends python3-pyqt5.qtwebkit to open the documentation from the UI but
+     it is not a necessity
+Author: Salvo 'LtWorf' Tomaselli <tiposchi@tiscali.it>
+
+--- relational-2.0.orig/driver.py
++++ relational-2.0/driver.py
+@@ -40,7 +40,7 @@ tests_path = 'test/'
+ 
+ def readfile(fname):
+     '''Reads a file as string and returns its content'''
+-    fd = open(fname)
++    fd = open(fname,encoding='utf-8')
+     expr = fd.read()
+     fd.close()
+     return expr
diff --git a/debian/patches/series b/debian/patches/series
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0fa572d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/debian/patches/series
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+00001-utf8_for_tests