International

To all of the readers of this blog, I would like first of all to express my wishes that 2011 will prove a more socially progressive and more humane year than the one which preceded it. New Year’s Day means looking ahead. As far as the European Parliament goes, 2011 will be important: we will be taking far-reaching decisions on economic governance, with the possibility that fewer powers will lie with the member states and more with Brussels. And we must take steps in relation to the multi-annual budget: will we continue to pump ever more money back and forth and will we increase the salaries of EU officials and MEPs? Or will Brussels also have to tighten its belt?

Euro
The SP will always approach matters constructively, but at the same time we will adhere to our own views. If the European Council believes that we should continue to put our taxes into an emergency fund in order to help destitute member states, this must not go ahead without a broad public debate, one in which all possible scenarios are discussed. What should be done in the event that countries cannot repay their loans? To take a couple of examples, if the whole of the emergency fund has been loaned out and the loans have not been repaid, this would cost the Netherlands a per capita sum of €2000. And just what would the consequences be should the eurozone split into a stronger and a weaker section? On these matters debate is surely to be expected.
If the European Council agrees that we need European economic governance, along the lines developed by the Commission, this will mean nothing less than that our social and fiscal policies will in the future be increasingly determined by Brussels. The trade union movement is dead against this. The level of wages should be decided by employers and workers and not by Brussels. Broad social debate must precede any such developments, and not decisions taken more or less secretly in the back-rooms of Brussels.
A new treaty amendment should certainly, in the SP’s view, be subject to referendum. The amendments now being proposed and the transfer of powers are so important that everyone who wishes to should have the chance to express his or her views, and a referendum, as was demonstrated by the debate over the European Constitution, is the best way to generate discussion and allow the voice of the citizen to be heard.

Budget
A referendum should also be held, or at the very least a broad social debate conducted, regarding the multi-annual budget. The whole Brussels circus is trying to maintain the existing structure: funds which primarily benefit multinationals and which, due to the enormous quantity of paperwork involved, are scarcely accessible to small firms; the pointless movement of moneys from member states to Brussels and back again; the outmoded agricultural policy – all of this is up for discussion, but Brussels is doing all it can to nip any such discussion in the bud. In the SP’s view the citizen has the right to participate in a discussion as to where and how his or her taxes are to be spent, as well as over the ways in which Brussels wastefulness could really be tackled.
In short, there’s a lot to do in 2011, and I’m looking forward to doing it…