International

Many Euro-MPs complain of the gap between the people and the European Parliament. Too little interest is taken in the EP; or there’s a shortage of quality information. On the basis of the latter argument we are blessed with all of those money-wasting communication programmes designed to send messages to the citizenry. But couldn’t it also be that the people have no time for the EP simply because most of the decisions taken there are ones to which most of them are opposed? This week various votes were held in which most representatives from the Netherlands voted directly against what the vast majority of the Dutch populations wants. In that sense you might ask yourself whether these MEPs are really people’s representatives at all.

The countdown has begun: fewer than a hundred days to the European elections on 22nd May, and less than a week before the SP national congress, where the election manifesto and list of candidates will be voted on by the party’s supreme decision-making organ. The European Parliament has adopted a motto for the elections: This time it’s different. In itself an empty slogan, but the SP can certainly agree with what it does say: these elections concern nothing more nor less than the preservation of our national democracy. Will the Netherlands become a province of Europe or will we remain at the controls? In the past we thought that it would never come to this, but this time is indeed different: it’s make or break!

This week in the European Parliament we will debate once more a proposal to make it a legal duty for car manufacturers to include a box that automatically phones emergency services in the event of an accident. Handy and life-saving? Or not? Emergency services have not made preparations for it, but lots of firms find data about where you have been driving extremely interesting and these data will also be recorded by the box. For these companies, the box can’t come soon enough. In the SP’s view, every driver should be able to decide for him- or herself whether to install such a box or not, but under pressure from major corporations the majority in the European Parliament want to make their permanent use compulsory for all.

This week I paid a quick visit to London to attend a conference on the reform of the European Union. The conference was organised by the British think tank Open Europe. My conclusion at the end of the day was that many British people have the same concerns as the SP regarding the undermining of national democracy by the increasingly far-reaching transfer of powers to Brussels. It’s just a pity that the British Conservatives remain committed to marketisation; because where the market rules, democracy takes a back seat.