International

This week, on behalf of the truck drivers, I presented three sets of written questions to the European Commission. Evidently the Commission isn’t about to take any action off its own bat, despite all its fine-sounding promises. Fraud, exploitation and the mess surrounding passes for tollbooths don’t make the life of the average truck driver any more pleasant. Together with the member states the Commission could be tackling these practices, but its silence is deafening. If I don’t get satisfactory answers, I’ll hold an emergency meeting with the various drivers’ organisations, because things can’t go on like this.

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.