International

PACE President and SP Senator Tiny Kox has urged states to 'vehemently counter any fake news' about the Istanbul Convention, the Council of Europe’s gold standard legal instrument for combating violence against women and domestic violence.

SP MP Jasper van Dijk wants the government to provide clarification on an important document that "went missing" at the Ministry of Defence. It concerns a report by Dutch soldiers about torture and murder of an Afghan farmer in Uruzgan by Australian soldiers in 2010. Van Dijk, together with D66, has asked parliamentary questions.
Van Dijk: " We owe it to journalists to learn that Defence archives are a mess. The case is reminiscent of previous scandals in which important documents were lost at the Ministry of Defence. It is essential that this document is brought to the surface.'

Energy is a primary service and energy utilities should be publicly owned so that we have a democratic control and say. A motion introduced jointly by the SP and the Christian Union, to investigate how the public interest in the Dutch energy supply can be increased has been adopted by a majority in Parliament.

People's costs must be lowered this year. In these times in which large corporations are making record profits, when the economy is thriving and the government is taking in billions of extra euros as a result of high prices, more and more Dutch citizens are struggling to get by.

The People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy (VVD) has been responsible for the asylum policy since 2012. The reception of refugees has been neglected to such an extent that it has culminated in the refugee crisis that the Netherlands now finds itself in. Hundreds of people, including children, have been forced to sleep outside in tents for many nights in Ten Apel. At the same time, the government designated a location in the tiny village of Albergen as a site for the reception of hundreds of refugees without any prior notification. This has to change.

Last week, the Dutch Senate has been debating the ratification of the CETA treaty. This free trade and investment treaty with Canada is highly controversial. Organisations from the trade union movement to the Consumers' Association, and from the environmental movement to various farmers' organisations, called on politicians not to agree.

A majority of the people in The Netherlands want to have more influence on important political issues. A binding corrective referendum is a useful democratic tool for this. It gives people the opportunity to call back administrators if decisions have been taken to which a majority in the country is opposed. The SP therefore proposed that the binding corrective referendum be included in the Constitution.

On Thursday, the Council of Europe received King Willem Alexander in Strasbourg. The King was invited to the Palace of Europe to address the Parliamentary Assembly. Tiny Kox, President of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, received the King in his office in the morning. They talked about the MH17 disaster debate that was to take place that day. Some relatives of victims of the MH17 disaster were present at the debate. They too were received in the morning by Kox, where they talked about the realisation and consequences of the report.

In his opening speech of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe summer session, President and SP-Senator Tiny Kox invited members to hold a minute of silence for all the victims of the war in Ukraine, urging them to help end the suffering of the Ukrainian people and to continue showing solidarity.