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Blog Dennis de Jong

11 November 2012

Dennis de Jong:

The battle of the European budget

EU finance ministers last week failed to reach agreement on the closure of the 2012 budget shortfall of at least €9 billion. There is also no agreement on the budget for next year or the multi-annual budget for 2014-2020. The European Commission and the European Parliament find this shameful. There is nevertheless a great deal to be said for maintaining an extremely critical attitude. While the member states are subject to a straitjacket of strict criteria governing budget deficits and national debts, here in Brussels we carry on writing a cheque for seven years’ money. Imagine that happening in the Netherlands. The national authorities would then have at their guaranteed disposal a fixed budget for the duration of two (or more) governments. Everyone would find that bizarre, but for the EU it’s the most normal thing in the world. Time for thoroughgoing change.

4 November 2012

Dennis de Jong:

Brussels wants to get rid of lower VAT rates

Earlier this month there was a brief announcement from the European Commissioner for Taxation Algirdas Šemeta to the effect that he was considering presenting a proposal to abolish the lower VAT tariff which member states are allowed to levy on certain goods and services. Only an announcement, but one which could have enormous consequences for people on low incomes, as it is necessities which in the Netherlands carry the reduced VAT rate of 6%. What, then, can have possessed this Commissioner? It is unfortunately just the latest example of a policy which demonstrates that Brussels has lost all contact with reality and with ordinary people. Here once again the SP has its work cut out. We must not allow things to get that far.

28 October 2012

Dennis de Jong:

The hypocrisy of Herman van Rompuy

This week during his speech in Strasbourg Herman van Rompuy showed his ‘social face’, or muttered at any rate at the end a few words on the need to combat unemployment and poverty, adding at the same time that these were wholly the responsibility of the member states. Because of the imposed austerity measures, the member states have, however, ever increasing problems in maintaining their national systems of social support, let alone strengthening them. If Van Rompuy were really socially minded, he would be arguing for the adoption by member state governments of tough agreements on social policy, even if that meant the 3% norm for budgetary policy becoming more nuanced.

21 October 2012

Dennis de Jong:

EU is forcing weaker Eurozone countries to privatise water sector

I have already noted in a previous weeklog that the weaker Eurozone countries are being used as a testing ground for the break-up of social provisions. See how far you can go before the people rebel. Now the lobbying watchdog ALTER EU has revealed that the Troika (the European Commission, European Central Bank and International Monetary Fund) is also forcing these countries to privatise their water sector. According to the Lisbon treaty the Commission has no say in such a matter, but they are simply using the Troika to push through their neoliberal policies. High time, then, that everyone signed the Citizens Initiative establishing that access to water is a human right and cannot be left to the market: www.right2water.eu

7 October 2012

Dennis de Jong:

Are Rutte and Samsom listening to Liikanen?

On October 2nd a working group under the leadership of Erki Liikanen, Governor of the Bank of Finland, completed its report on the banking sector. The group advocates, amongst other things, a more thoroughgoing division between banking activities involving risk and ordinary banking activities, and also wants to see real limits put on bonuses. In the SP’s view these proposals might have gone much further, but at least the report goes in the right direction. Dutch bankers have once more protested, not having yet learnt their lesson. The report should, however, be obligatory reading for Prime Minister Mark Rutte and his potential coalition partner, Labour leader Diederik Samsom, who could incorporate the proposals into their plans for government. Then we’d really see whose pulling the strings when it comes to this accord. Labour - who even wanted to see a national public bank – or, via the Liberals, the bankers who reject even the mildest proposals?

30 September 2012

Dennis de Jong:

Troika’s confusion in Athens

30-09-2012 • The Troika, consisting of representatives of the European Commission, the European Central Bank (ECB) and the International Monetary Fund (IMF), has once again descended on Athens. In the midst of the piles of rubble left by last week’s riots, the Troika finds itself in an equal state of confusion. The SP has once again been proved right: what’s owed turns out to be much higher than expected, the demolition policy isn’t working and according to the IMF it’s time for a real restructuring of the debt. Meanwhile the Greeks are not only desperate, but are gradually losing all restraint. Alexis Tsipras, opposition leader in the Greek Parliament, predicts the swift downfall of the government as a consequence of growing popular protest. Will Brussels listen this time? Or will we see in October, once again, yet another non-summit of government leaders?

23 September 2012

Dennis de Jong:

The social face of Europe

To see the social face of Europe, you will have to go tomorrow not to the ‘European Quarter’ of Brussels, but to the Atomium across town in Heysel. That’s where hundreds of lorry drivers will be protesting against the evasion of collective labour agreements (CAOs) in road transport, an action which symbolises the total absence of any social agenda in Europe. Imposing a six-day week in Greece, of course, but no sign of effective action against exploitation or the undermining of CAOs. I’ll be fighting for such action both inside and outside the European Parliament, including tomorrow with the truckers in Heysel.

16 September 2012

Dennis de Jong:

Barroso loses the plot

Last week it was a case of ‘here we go again’. In a forced attempt to come over as the ‘President of Europe’, Commission President Jose Barroso delivered his ‘State of the Union’ address in Strasbourg. According to Barroso the time has come for a ‘Federation of Nation States’. A banking union, an economic union and a political union must be quickly brought into being. The European Parliament must become a parliament in which only European political parties are represented, parties which can in their turn also provide the new president of the Commission. Barroso has shown himself once again to be like ‘Rupsje Nooitgenoeg’, the caterpillar who was always hungry for more.

9 September 2012

Dennis de Jong:

SP has to drag Labour to the left in Brussels, too

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.

2 September 2012

Dennis de Jong:

Breakthrough on EU Expert Groups?

In all the sturm und drang of an election it’s easy to forget that next week the European Parliament will awake from its summer sleep. Things should, moreover, be quite exciting: at least I will have the chance to enter into serious negotiations with the European Commission over the composition and transparency of its advisory ‘expert groups’, while on Thursday we will vote on the question of whether the finance for these groups, which we recently blocked, can now be released. That would be fine, but only if the Commission guarantees that the expert groups will cease to be the playthings of major corporations, and instead be opened to representatives of all interest groups, including workers, consumers and small business.

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