International

It was a heated discussion of Europe that we had yesterday at the SP’s members’ day at Arnhem’s Open Air Museum, and not only because of the literal heat of the day. The assembled members showered Harry van Bommel (responsible for European affairs in the party’s parliamentary group in the Hague) and myself with questions about the sources of their annoyance: the waste, the high salaries and of course the eurocrisis. The heart of the discussion, however, and not only in Arnhem but in general, concerns people’s dignity. Whether we let the financial markets and neoliberal directors of major corporations run the show in Brussels, or take the power back and work together with ordinary people from the whole of Europe. The SP stands for the latter: no more tricks, no more decisions taken behind the scenes and no eurocratic power games.

The European Commission this week presented its findings on the situation in Romania and Bulgaria. These were, in a word, devastating, and the Commission openly casts doubt on whether these countries should have been allowed into the European Union at all. Since the publication of the findings, however, things have remained surprisingly quiet. Parties which attempted to put the SP and other doubters under pressure to agree to the removal of border controls and to accept the two countries into full membership of Schengen now have nothing much to say. At most they express strong criticism of Romania in particular, a country in which what almost amounted to a coup d’état has taken place. Generally speaking it’s nice to be proved right, but in the meantime the people of both nations are suffering under state systems which hardly even merit the term ‘semi-democratic’, with raging corruption and organised crime in abundance.

Today on national radio could be heard the first part of a two-part series in which a documentary team followed VVD (centre-right liberals) MEP Hans van Baalen and myself around for a day of the Strasbourg plenary of the European Parliament. The underlying question three years after our election as Euro-MPs is: does it all make sense? My answer to this is positive: apart from the general attention paid to Europe, which has only grown, you can exercise some influence on European legislation. Two examples: we kicked out a Commission proposal to introduce still more competition at airports, a proposal which would undoubtedly have led to a further deterioration in conditions of employment for ground staff. And with 150 amendments I am trying to guarantee employees’ social rights when services are put out to tender.

According to most Euro-MPs the European Union, far more than that of the individual member states, is the motor of our economy. Money spent by Brussels gives more added value. That may be the case for cross-border or important innovative projects, but for the rest it seems to me much handier for money to be spent by national governments, who can judge far better than can Brussels the local, regional and national needs of their economies. Furthermore, this approach would avoid a lot of administrative toing and froing.