International

It's peaceful at the European Parliament at the moment, as there's almost nobody here. The SP group also takes a break, and for the next three weeks our offices will be empty, just like all the other offices. So this is an excellent opportunity to read all of those reports which as a Euro-MP one receives daily. Amongst these is an outstanding report from the European trade union movement on public services. Making use of certain new provisions contained in the Lisbon Treaty, the trade union movement wants an assurance from the European Commission that local, regional and national authorities will again be able to take their own decisions regarding public services, without being continually hampered by Brussels. The Commission would like to see everything as the 'market', and the authorities forced to farm out public services to private parties. Precisely what the Commission wants: the more market, the more opportunities for major corporations, something the Commission has been fond of for twenty years or more.

Within the European Commission there are of course different tendencies. Just as in The Hague, you have 'ministries', though at the Commission they're known as Directorates-General. If you speak with people from DG-Social Affairs, you will hear a different story to that told by those from DG-Internal Market. Unfortunately it is the market people who have had the most influence in recent years, which is why the Commission is there like a flash to put public authorities right if they should wish to take the reins of public services into their own hands. We saw this not long ago in the case of the housing associations: I spoke a few weeks back with representatives of the housing associations and they were angry about the unilateral measure from the Commission which would mean that the associations would only be allowed to let apartments to people on less than €33,000 p.a. Below this level the Commission can appreciate that this is a public service, but if the housing associations also let apartments to people on higher incomes, they would be guilty of unfair competition. The Commission is in this instance taking over the role of the Dutch government. How did they decide on the upper income limit? And why have they no sympathy with the argument that certain people, especially first-time buyers, even those who earn more than €33,000, are as things stand unable to buy a house on the commercial market, simply because they can't get a mortgage? Thanks to a motion from my SP colleague in the national parliament Sadet Karabulut, which won the support of a majority of MPs, the government will be obliged to take this question back to Brussels, so we have not heard the last of this.