International

Never has the SP had so much attention from the international media as we have in the last few weeks. That’s not without cause. They know well enough that if the party has its say, things could really change in Europe. For newspapers with close links with major corporations and financial institutions, that represents a nightmare: with the SP at the helm an end could be put to twenty-five years of occupation of Brussels by the neoliberals. For other media, on the other hand, this is an opportunity, the hope that European policymaking can be freed, given back to ordinary people. It’s unbelievably exciting, but now more than ever, those Dutch citizens who want to see a change in Europe should vote SP.

In the European Parliament the centre-right Christian Democrats of the European People’s Party and the centre-left Social Democrats of the Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats have from the very beginning called the shots together. Now one group is the bigger, then the other, and the two often come to an arrangement between themselves. They know that if they both support something, there is automatically a majority in the European Parliament and other parties can go to the devil. In this way the two have set this Europe on a neoliberal course since the 1980s, and kept it there. Both are also strongly anchored within the Eurocracy. In every important post in the EU you’ll find either a Christian democrat (or equivalent) or a social democrat. Only the centre-right liberals have, as the next biggest group, succeeded in getting their hands on a number of strategic functions.

If you’re for a real change in Europe, for an end to budget fetishism and the continual lust for regulation, and for the introduction of a social agenda, you won’t get far with these two big political groups. In many EU member states we are seeing, however, that the real modern left is winning, and winning strongly. Just as in the Netherlands the SP is succeeding in pushing Labour to the left, so the hope is that in two years’ time, when the next European elections come around, the modern left will become so strong that a left majority will be created. In the Netherlands the PvdA – the Labour Party – will go over to the right as soon as they have the chance, and only the SP can stop this from happening. And just as in the Netherlands, we must ensure that in Brussels too the social democrats and the centre-right are no longer able to form a majority together and that the social democrats need the support of the left. Only then will there be real change and only then will the EP gain teeth instead of being led by the nose by Eurocrats and big business. The elections in the Netherlands are also then of tremendous importance throughout Europe, capable of giving a powerful push to the modern left movement. They are counting on us, counting on the SP.