International

Some five hundred angry railworkers were in Brussels today to protest against European Union plans to impose further deregulation in rail. Both SP Euro-MP Dennis de Jong and party colleague Farshad Bashir, a member of the Dutch national parliament, supported the demonstrators in their criticism of the disastrous plans. ‘We have seen in the last few years that deregulation of Dutch rail has certainly not led to improvements in quality,’ says Bashir. ‘Both passengers and staff will be the victims if these neoliberal plans are not rejected.’

Bashir and De Jong intend to take up the cudgels in both Brussels and the Netherlands against a further run-down of rail services. ‘If the Netherlands agrees to these proposals then everything that has anything to do with rail will have to be sold off under the guise of competition,’ Bashir explains. ‘What this means in practice is that German and French state-owned companies will divide up the Dutch rail network between themselves. The SP wants to merge the two companies, ProRail and NS, formed in the last wave of deregulation and aim to at last put the passenger first, instead of the multinationals’ profits.’