February 6th, 2010 • SP Member of Parliament Harry van Bommel describes himself as "delighted" by the court ruling that the Dutch government must cease discriminating against Iranian students. The judgement puts an end to a recently-introduced regulation that bans Iranians from studying nuclear physics as well as from working at nuclear installations.

February 5th, 2010 • "According to the national Health Council asbestos is much more dangerous than has been previously believed. The Ministry of Social Affairs considers that annually seven hundred people die from mesothelomia, which is demonstrably caused by asbestos. The Health Council believes it probable that a further nine hundred die from lung cancer." I read this in the Dutch national newspaper Trouw on 16th January, while an Italian cancer specialist last week told the Belgian paper De Morgen that "We expect the epidemic to peak in 2020. Hundreds of people in whom we now see no symptoms will by then have developed a tumour."

February 5th, 2010 • SP Member of Parliament Harry van Bommel will go to Ukraine this weekend to act as an election observer in Sunday's decisive second round presidential poll. On Friday, the SP international affairs spokesman will visit Kiev for a briefing and a meeting with the two surviving candidates, Prime Minister Julia Timoshenko and opposition leader Viktor Yanukovych. Saturday will see him fly to Odessa for a local briefing in the city in which he will be acting as election observer.

February 4th, 2010 • On 2nd February the major European multinational corporations, united in the European Round Table of Industrialists published a statement of opinion, For a competitive Europe in 2025. For Dennis de Jong, Chair of the SP group in the European Parliament, this brought back bad memories: in 1985 the same group, then headed by Philips boss Wisse Dekker, brought out a similar report, one which led to the wave of liberalisation and privatisation which has since swept Europe. "A quarter of a century later they're still singing the same song, as if an old-fashioned gramophone record was stuck on a scratch. Once again we have first of all the dogma of the free market, despite the fact that analysts the world over have pronounced neoliberalism dead."

February 4th, 2010 • by Harry van Bommel

Last week the Davids Commission presented its report on the events leading to the war against Iraq and the Netherlands’ support for it. A report which pulled no punches. I was pleasantly surprised by the unambiguous conclusions, but at the presentation something else went wrong. This came about as a result of the principles themselves. Commission Chair Davids and Prime Minister Balkenende both came out with remarkable gafs.

February 3rd, 2010 • At the request of SP Member of Parliament Remi Poppe, Secretary of State for Defence Jack De Vries is to make the Calamiteiten (Disasters) hospital in Utrecht and the Military Rehabilitation Centre (MRC) in Doorn available to the United Nations. Both institutions will be able to help with the medical treatment of victims of the earthquake in Haiti. “Haiti has a huge problem providing medical care," says Poppe. "The Netherlands must help to alleviate this problem, at least for the most urgent cases.”

February 2nd, 2010 • SP Member of Parliament Krista van Velzen wants to see an independent enquiry into the reliability of the information sent to MPs about the Joint Strike Fighter, a US-constructed military aircraft which the government is planning to purchase. It became clear last Monday that information originating from the American JSF Project Office (JPO) has turned out to be inaccurate. “Parliament has repeatedly based its judgements on this dubious information," says Van Velzen. "I am determined to get to the bottom of this.”

January 31st, 2010 • Last Friday, 29th January, I attended a meeting with the main Dutch trade union federation, the FNV, on the subject of its efforts as regards Brussels. In the past I found it striking that the voice of the trade unions was insufficiently heard within the EU institutions. For every labour movement lobbyist there were ninety-nine from industry. The FNV recognises this and wants, furthermore, to do something about it, but there remains a huge information lag and a lack of means to address the problem.

January 30th, 2010 • "The cabinet is ready to burst apart," SP leader Agnes Kant told 1200 members assembled this weekend for the SP's 16th National Congress in Rotterdam. "The chance that the Netherlands will go to the polls not once but twice this year is great," Kant said, referring to the possibility that local elections in March will be followed by an early general election later in the year.

January 29th, 2010 • National parliaments will be working to bring about improved answerability in the spending of EU moneys. This was the outcome of the interparliamentary conference on the issue which closed today. SP Member of Parliament Farshad Bashir, co-organiser of the conference, is on balance positive in his assessment of the event. “Fifteen times has the European Court of Auditors refused to give its approval to the EU's spending. This is undermining trust in the Union."

January 28th, 2010 • “The wellbeing of human beings and of animals must be the starting points for European policy, not afterthoughts." So argues Kartika Liotard, Member of the European Parliament for the SP. "In aquaculture, which involves the intensive, industrialised production of fish for consumption, improvements in welfare have not been treated as a central task, and too little attention has been paid, also, to the environment."

January 28th, 2010 • “Koenders' aid doesn't aid”, was former centre-right (VVD) Member of Parliament Arend-Jan Boekestijn's view in an opinion piece which appeared in NRC.Next on 20th January. Expressing pity for development minister Bert Koenders (or ‘poor Koenders’), Boekestijn announced that the 'God-is-dead-theory' was valid in relation to modern development aid, but was very selective in his reading of the report on which he based this, ignoring criticism of his own hobby horses.

January 28th, 2010 • A call from SP Senator Tiny Kox on behalf of the United Left group in the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe for Haiti's debts to be immediately cancelled won broad support in the 47-country body. “Giving money now to combat the results of the catastrophic earthquake then shortly after demanding money in payment of foreign debts makes absolutely no sense,” said Kox.

January 26th, 2010 • According to SP member of Parliament Harry van Bommel, Parliament must interview former Foreign Minister Jaap de Hoop Scheffer in public in relation to the Davids Commission report, which found that the government of which De Hoop Scheffer was a member, acted unlawfully in supporting the US-UK attack on Iraq in 2003. Van Bommel's statement came in reaction to this morning's pronouncements from the former minister, who went on to head NATO, during the radio programme Dit is de Dag ('This is the day'). “The Davids Commission concluded that the decision to support the attack on Iraq was based in the first instance on 'Atlantic solidarity'" says Van Bommel. "If De Hoop Scheffer denies this he is denying at the same time the Commission's core findings. Parliament cannot ignore the views of this directly involved former minister and should interview him publicly."

January 25th, 2010 • The SP is supporting protests against the dishonest lobby practices of a manufacturer of genetically manipulated foodstuffs. Biotech giant Syngenta has hired the lobbying services of one Suzy Renckens. Until recently Renckens was employed as the head of the scientific panel researching into genetically modified organisms (GMOs) on behalf of the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA), an official EU body.

January 24th, 2010 • Along with a motley company of Euro-MPs from various political tendencies, I found in Strasbourg this week that there was enough time between voting sessions to attend the re-establishment of the Intergroup on Ageing. And not only had I to find the time, but the place, as we all ended up going to the wrong room, having been given the wrong number. 1.3 instead of 3.1, a mistake involving numerous storeys, flights of stairs, lifts and corridors. You might well think that old age brings with it a number of deficiencies, but as it turns out, anyone can make mistakes, even a room coordinator barely out of school!

January 21st, 2010 • SP Member of Parliament Paul Ulenbelt is urging Employment Secretary Frank Heemskerk to do all in his power to save 570 Dutch jobs at the firm of Wärtsilä. The Finnish producer of screws for and motor parts for ships is to relocate its production units, including those in the Netherlands, to China. Wärtsilä cites Chinese pressure as an explanation, and Paul Ulenbelt wants to know more about this. Parliament will shortly debate the situation.

January 21st, 2010 • SP European Parliament group leader Dennis de Jong has asked the European Commission for its comments on KLM-Airfrance's stated intention to introduce an extra charge - dubbed an 'obesitax' - for seriously overweight people. “In Europe there are rules which protect the rights of people with a handicap who are travelling by air. Obesity is seen by the World Health Organisation, quite rightly, as an illness. People suffering from obesity should be helped, but instead they are going to be punished by KLM-Airfrance. I want to know whether the Commission is going to hold the airline to the rules.”

January 20th, 2010 • Tiny Kox argues that a fear of moving away from the neoliberal consensus left Holland with a 'coalition of losers' as a Government and a centre-right consensus that doesn't properly reflect the views of the Dutch

January 18th, 2010 • by Jan Marijnissen

During the process which led to the formation of the present governing coalition, the Christian Democrats (CDA), who had been in government also in 2003 when the war on Iraq was launched, demanded that there should be no parliamentary enquiry into the question of the Dutch government's support for the US/UK attack. That was one of the reasons why any question of the SP governing in coalition with the CDA was impossible. I have never understood how a political party could accept such an undemocratic demand, one which takes out of the hands of parliament its most important weapon.

January 18th, 2010 • SP Member of Parliament Ewout Irrgang is urging Development Minister Bert Koenders to demand the cancellation of Haiti's debts to the IMF and World Bank. “A terrible catastrophe of unprecedented proportions has hit Haiti. The most urgent priority must now be the saving of as many lives as possible through the provision of sufficient aid. The huge problems experienced in connection with this are already making that an enormous task. But the reconstruction of the country which must follow will be at least as difficult.”

January 17th, 2010 • It hasn't attracted much attention, but we find ourselves in the midst of a new wave of takeovers. The buying frenzy has broken out once again. What this means is corporations becoming even bigger, as well as more space for profitmaking on the basis of speculation. Managers and shareholders will be able once more to make pots of money by dealing in companies, rather than having any real involvement in them. And the European Commission merely sits back and watches.

January 15th, 2010 • This week the European Parliament fell under the spell of the twenty-seven hearings, one for each of Commissioners-designate, who had one-by-one to take an exam before their appointment to the European Commission could be confirmed. These exams involved the completion of a questionnaire, after which the nominees were given three hours to answer questions from MEPs.

January 15th, 2010 • One of life's certainties is that it's always election time somewhere or other. And as a member of the parliamentary group of the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) I have the good fortune that during my term of office as a Senator for the SP I am able to act as an observer in some of these elections. Following Albania last summer, winter sees me in Ukraine. Everyone can still remember the battered face of Yushchenko at the last presidential elections, the protests in the streets, all of this entering history as the 'Orange Revolution'. He survived it and was seen as a martyr, a hero of the nation, the one who who would put this huge country on the map.

by SP Senator Eric Smaling

January 14th, 2010 • Since Wednesday evening the government has been exposed, at last: its support in 2003 for the war in Iraq lacked an adequate mandate under international law. It was forced to alter its position after a commission that investigated the Dutch involvement in the Iraq war had concluded that Balkenende’s support lacked any such mandate. The Davids Report, as it is known, cannot be without consequences for the current Dutch government.

January 14th, 2010 • SP leader Agnes Kant supports the idea of calling former Defence Minister Henk Kamp before parliament to hear what he has to say about the process which led to the decision to give political support to the war in Iraq. An independent commission of enquiry this week declared the war, and the government’s decision, to have been unlawful. “But in addition to Mr Kamp, there’s a number of other people that parliament should be questioning. For example, former minister Jaap De Hoop Scheffer and the weapons inspectors who were involved at the time. We should use the relevant instrument, a parliamentary enquiry. ”

January 14th, 2010 • Today in the European Parliament the hearing took place of European Commissioner-designate Neeli Kroes. The SP called her attention to the issue of Internet access for all, but Kroes was unable to cite any concrete steps she had in mind to achieve this and avoid social division. SP European Parliamentary group leader Dennis de Jong says: ´The Internet has now become so important that you really can't manage without it any more. So everyone should have a right of access. Kroes says that she wants everyone to have the Internet as quickly as possible, but how she will guarantee this is far from clear."

January 12th, 2010 • “The Davids Commission enquiry shows that the Dutch government was determined to support what they knew to be an illegal invasion of Iraq. Neither the UN resolutions nor the threat of weapons of mass destruction, but blind, docile following of the United States determined our country's policy," says SP leader Agnes Kant.

January 10th, 2010 • The week to come will see a strike at the EU institutions in Brussels. Officials are calling for a 3.7% pay increase instead of the 1.8% agreed by the member states in December. According to the rules they should indeed have had 3.7%, so formally they are in the right, but you have to ask yourself where their feeling of solidarity has got to, solidarity with all those people who have been badly affected by the crisis.