SP European Parliament Group sets priorities - trade, internal market, and budgetary control
SP European Parliament Group sets priorities - trade, internal market, and budgetary control
Next week will see the first Strasbourg plenary with the newly elected MEPs. This means that we will find out once and for all who will sit in which parliamentary committee. Negotiations over this within the United European Left, the group in which the SP participates, went well. Our new Member Anne-Marie Mineur will tackle international trade while I will be able to continue on the internal market and budgetary control committees. An excellent start to a new parliamentary term.
As the SP European Parliament Group we get rather a lot of letters from lobbying organisations asking whether we will please join committees which are of importance to Dutch business. Well, they can write to us, but as SP Members we will be guided first and foremost by what is of greatest importance to the realisation of what we promised in our election manifesto. Quite apart from that, these lobbyists don’t seem to realise that you can’t simply pick and choose. Every Euro-MP can state his or her preference, but the result is that it always turns out that for some committees more interest exists than can be accommodated by your political group. The bigger the group, the more places it gets.
The Group’s secretariat draws up an overview of all stated preferences and attempts as fairly as possible to divide up what’s available. You can make changes, but only if a colleague is willing to swap with you. Say that someone has been given a place on the development committee, but would rather have international trade. If someone on the international trade committee wants to move to development, a deal can be made. Otherwise the secretariat’s division remains the guide.
For Anne-Marie it was, as it turned out, unfortunately not possible to get a place on the committee on industry, research and energy, but she did manage to grab another top prize, the trade committee. Amongst other things this committee is responsible for handling the proposed Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), an agreement between the United States and the EU. This means that the SP European Parliament Group will have a front seat at the negotiations on the TTIP and we will be doing all that we can to ensure that it never comes into force. We certainly don’t want to be lumbered with American conditions when it comes to social-, consumer- or environmental policy, and absolutely not with arbitration procedures which enable multinational corporations to force the Netherlands’ government to change policies that don’t suit them. Anne-Marie’s other committee will be civil liberties, justice and home affairs.
I will be staying on the same committees as I was on in the last term. It’s likely that I’ll be spokesperson on the internal market for the United European Left, and probably also on budgetary control. In addition, I too will be sitting on civil liberties, justice and home affairs.
Even though this is a good start, we won’t be limiting ourselves to the subjects which crop up on the agendas of our committees. The truck drivers can count on our support, even if we aren’t represented on the transport committee, and we will also, of course, be continuing the fight for more transparency and to reduce the influence of big business lobbyists. After the summer the European Parliament will get down to its substantial work, but we’re already rolling up our sleeves for the tasks ahead.
- See also:
- Dennis de Jong