International

According to SP leader Emile Roemer the European Commission’s recent proposal for a European Banking Union is a massive step in the wrong direction. ‘If it’s left to the Commission,’ he explains, ‘the Dutch banks which we have kept afloat with our taxes will soon be paying up to save banks in other countries.’

Roemer’s view is that this represents an attempt by the Commission to hugely increase its own powers, a move which cannot be justified. ‘The Commission presents itself as an impartial referee, but the banking lobby in Brussels is enormous. The Commission will soon run the show, while the Netherlands pays for it,’ he says. ‘The Commission has no sort of democratic legitimacy in forcing through this type of change. Germany is right to say that this can’t be effected without a Treaty amendment,’ which would require the unanimous assent of the twenty-eight member states. And if powers are going to be transferred to Brussels, then in my view the Dutch people must first be given the chance to say what they think of that.’

Roemer also described the reaction of the Dutch Finance Minister, Jeroen Dijsselbloem, who is also the current Chair of the Eurozone – the body which brings together the seventeen countries which use the single currency – as ‘disappointing’, adding that ‘Dijsselbloem evidently thinks it a fine thing that the Commission is snatching important powers away from him. In doing so, however, he’s putting the interests of the Dutch people in jeopardy, which is unworthy of a Dutch minister.’