International

Today saw the SP's newly proposed policy on integration made available to the party's more than 50,000 members. The statement, entitled Shared Future, will now be discussed in the branches, leading to a renewed and updated policy on integration.

The proposed policy was drawn up by the SP's parliamentary group and its Executive, as the first move in both an internal and external discussion between now and the summer. The branches will discuss the proposal, offer criticisms and suggest improvements. In April the proposal and all of these suggestions will be discussed in regional conferences.

Shared Future: Proposals for participation, emancipation and integration, focuses on education, accommodation and employment. It builds on the SP's more than twenty-five years of stressing the importance of mastery of the Dutch language, of equal opportunities for all and of participation in the broad society.

It puts forward concrete proposals for the development of an active policy for the integration of schools and neighbourhoods.

It calls, amongst other things, for an amendment to the education code so that the duty to accept a child in a school may be enforced. Schools must adopt a double waiting-list system to take account of children with educational difficulties and those with no such problems, ensuring a better distribution of both. Foreign financing of schools must be banned.

In order to bring about more mixed neighbourhoods the government must adopt a much stricter approach than is currently the case. White neighbourhoods must be broken up by offering more affordable housing within them. Premises stuffed to the gills with undocumented immigrants by Rachmanite landlords should be repossessed.

Compulsory naturalisation should henceforth be tackled in the same way as compulsory education. Courses must be better tuned to the demands of seeking employment.

New themes which have arisen are the role of Islam, the alienation of traditional Dutch populations within their own neighbourhoods, and the influx of tens of thousands of workers from central and eastern Europe..