International

With thousands of employees and visitors per day wanting to be fed, catering in the European Parliament is serious business. The EP recently changed its catering contractor, the aim being to lower costs and improve quality. Now it turns out that the change has led to a grave deterioration in the working conditions of canteen staff increasingly employed on zero-hours contracts, under which they must stay at the beck and call of the employer without knowing when or for how many hours they will be required. This is an intolerable situation which the SP’s political group, the United European Left, wants to see changed, and rapidly. Food which has to rely on exploitation of workers leaves gives off a bad smell.

On 2nd May I presented the demand of the all-party Transparency Intergroup in the European Parliament for an obligatory transparency register to the responsible European Commissioner, Frans Timmermans. One of the questions with which we are still struggling concerns the position of the member states’ diplomatic representation in Brussels. Should the Dutch ambassador to the European Union also be obliged to receive only registered lobbyists?

All of a sudden this week I have begun to receive Tweets and emails asking me whether the SP’s European Parliament team would ever cooperate with the extreme right. Normally I wouldn’t bother reacting to such a question, but because I’ve received so many concerned enquiries, I’ve decided in the interests of clarity to state categorically on this weeklog: with the Dutch PVV and their far right allies, the SP will not cooperate or work either at home or in Brussels.

This week in Strasbourg we vote on the European Parliament's input into the negotiations over the new Port Services Regulation. In the past there has been a great deal of perfectly justified unrest surrounding EU legislation on this issue. Ports would have to be privatised. Pilotage must be subject to competition. Moreover, rules protecting port employees must be annulled. The text on which we were asked to vote this week takes precisely the opposite line: member states must determine how they organise their ports, but the rights of employees, including those negotiated in collective labour agreements, must be respected. British ports in particular are up in arms, but it's great that the trend towards liberalisation and privatisation has been turned around, firstly in the case of inland water transport, and now in relation to port services.