International

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

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.

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.

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.