International

Last week government leaders meeting as the European Council decided that a ‘small’ treaty amendment is necessary in order to enable the establishment of a permanent emergency fund for eurozone countries experiencing difficulties. It would, however, have to be under strict conditions, as the German Chancellor Angela Merkel expressly stated. If the proposal goes through in its entirety, it will amount not to a ‘small’ amendment but to the beginning of still more of a say over national economic policies for Brussels. Government leaders referred to it as ‘small’ in order to avoid provoking a real debate amongst the peoples of the member states, or the organization of referenda. This is the same old defect: Brussels will grow more powerful, but without having listened to the citizens of Europe’s countries.

The coming week will be taken up by three conferences, all of them concerning the criminal law. On Tuesday I’m speaking at a conference on the implications of the Lisbon Treaty for criminal law. We in the SP are always on our guard when it comes to European interference in this aspect of law, and in a surreptitious fashion we are seeing more and more European regulation in this area. I will be arguing for a clear vision, in which the Netherlands remains in complete control of at least 90% of the criminal law. On Wednesday I’m participating in a conference on drugs policy and I will yet again explain that a repressive approach has demonstrably no effect, while the Dutch policy of tolerance has had a great deal more success. Finally, on Thursday, during a conference on the fight against corruption, I intend to take a strong line against the lack of action on the part of the European Commission.

Last week I devoted several days to the International Anti-Corruption Conference organised by Transparency International (TI) in Bangkok. My most important message was for the European Commission – will you at last take action against growing corruption in Europe?

Until recently the European Court of Justice (ECJ) has been primarily known for a range of decisions via which workers' rights were subordinated to the principle of unrestrained competition. Just this week, however, the Court surprised friend and foe with a ruling which determined that people working in catering at Heineken, who had seen their employment contracts transferred to a different firm, Albron, would not be obliged to accept a lowering of their wages or a worsening of their conditions of employment. Companies attempting to use this kind of outsourcing as a form of social dumping have been told to think again: the Court does not find it acceptable. One swallow doesn't make a summer, but in another recent decision the ECJ showed itself to be more responsive to arguments from the social good than it has been in the past. Could the social rights somewhat reluctantly included in the Lisbon Treaty at last be getting their teeth?