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Blog Dennis de Jong

13 October 2013

A new danger – the global Bolkenstein Directive

Sometimes the most inane things hit the front pages, while important matters are relegated to the lower columns of the economics section.

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6 October 2013

Is Lampedusa really in Europe?

Today thirty more bodies were buried, making a total of 140 that have lost their lives because they had begun their journey to the Italian island of Lampedusa in an overcrowded boat. The member states and most Members of the European Parliament have sat back and allowed an ugly situation to develop and persist. They evidently find the existing asylum system excellent. On Tuesday the European Union Council of Ministers for Foreign Affairs meets to discuss the matter. Hopefully they will go beyond expressing their sorrow about the accident. Structural solutions are needed and this won’t wait a single day longer.

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1 October 2013

Superstate no, cooperation yes

Yesterday, the SP Party Council, which is made up of the chair of every branch and which is the party’s supreme body between national conferences, discussed the memorandum in which is outlined our standpoint on Europe. It was good to see how much unanimity exists among the branches. As it currently functions, we are not at all happy about the European Union. The whole thing must change. The SP wants to see a treaty amendment which is subject to referendum, so that everyone can have a say. We want fewer Eurocrats who think only in terms of power for ‘Brussels’, and of course we want an end to neoliberal policies. But above all we want national democracy restored. We don’t want the Dutch government’s policy plans and the budget which accompanies them menaced by a Commission opinion which hangs above like Damocles’ sword. Power must be taken off big corporations and given back to the people. With that as our guiding motto we will get to work on a solid election manifesto.

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22 September 2013

New rules on state aids will clear more space for small businesses

The European Commission is currently revising the rules on state aids. In particular, it is to adjust the threshold beneath which state aids may be granted.

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15 September 2013

‘Free’ entertainment on the European Parliament website

This week I received an email from the Vice-Presidents of the European Parliament responsible for ‘Communications’. From now on all Euro-MPs are to be assisted on their way to the European Parliamentary elections next spring via a ‘download centre’ - http://www.europarl.europa.eu/downloadcentre - where all kinds of ‘information material’ can be found. The material currently available is quite pathetic, and I have never once made use of it in my work as an SP Euro-MP. A bunch of amateurs have been working on it and the completely unusable results are now being urged on us by email. Utter wastefulness.

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8 September 2013

The euro makes us poor

According to the CPB - the official Dutch Bureau for Economic Policy Analysis – each of us gains a week’s salary per year from ‘our’ euro. This is a bizarre statement, when you consider that the purchasing power of a Dutchman or Dutchwoman has not on average increased since 1997. As for GDP, it’s true that this grew strongly in the euro’s first years; however, since the credit crisis it has ceased to grow. As soon as it had at last become clear even to the financial world that huge differences existed between member states in the eurozone, there has no longer been any sign of growth. So I can’t find any confirmation in the statistics that the euro is good for our economy, and I ask myself with increasing frequency if it hasn’t actually made us poorer rather than richer.

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25 August 2013

Where’s our money?

We have to cut spending. That’s what the European Union says and that’s what our Prime Minister Mark Rutte and Finance Minister Jeroen Dijsselbloem say. So how can it be that in the last twenty-five years that our Gross Domestic Product (GDP) has risen by 35%, while the level of provision of public services has deteriorated? And how can it be that the rise in prosperity has not been reflected in our disposable income, which has not risen in fifteen years, after rising by a mere 20% or so in the decade which preceded that period? We are richer as a nation, yet the state must cut more and more services, while as individual consumers we also have less to spend. Something here simply doesn’t add up.

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4 August 2013

Rays of hope for the economy?

During the last few weeks the Chairman of the European Central Bank, Mario Draghi, has announced that there are cautious signs of recovery in the eurozone as a whole. In particular, firms have more confidence in the economic prospects. This is a lovely message to receive during a hot summer. It’s also a lovely message on the eve of the German elections. Pity it’s not reliable.

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28 July 2013

EU prepared to help Turkish human rights movement

A few weeks ago I devoted my weeklog to the violent actions taken by the Turkish authorities towards the demonstrations against the Erdogan government. Many people have since emailed me over the matter, all of them emphasising how important it is, both materially and politically, for the EU to offer real support to the Turkish human rights movement. I promised them that I would look into what the possibilities were, and have since discovered that the EU delegation in Turkey both has the financial means and is prepared to deploy them in support of these defenders of human rights. Time to make effective use of them, because the situation in Turkey is onl;y growing more forbidding.

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21 July 2013

Should the EU take action against the filthy conditions in Hungarian hospitals?

I received an e-mail from someone who had needed emergency hospital treatment in Hungary and had been shocked by the unbelievably unhygienic conditions and wanted to know if there was anything I could do about this. This is the kind of dilemma I come across often. Whether it’s the suffering of animals or inadequate social services, such as in this case in health care, people will demand from Brussels that something is at last done. At the same time it’s exactly what we don’t want – more zeal for interference from Brussels when it comes to our own services. The solution for me lies in the word ‘cooperation’. We appear to have forgotten that states can also simply work together without the Brussels bureaucracy having to be brought into play.

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