International

There should be no question of Brussels interfering with the Netherlands' social housing policy, says SP Member of Parliament Krista van Velzen. Ms van Velzen was reacting to the announcement that the EU authorities are putting pressure on the Netherlands government to sell a large proportion of the publicly-owned accommodation currently offered to let. “The government must exercise its right of veto in relation to other measures if this is what is needed to prevent the EU from putting our social housing in jeopardy,” she said.

Employers who expose their workers to deadly dangers – firms which mislead the public authorities and manipulate research findings – corporations responsible for hundreds of thousands of victims. This is the picture presented in Het asbestdrama (The tragedy of asbestos), a book which tells the story of a hundred years of the asbestos industry. In the Netherlands alone to date 7000 people have died from asbestos-related cancer, a figure which will grow by around 12,000 in the next 25 years. In western Europe 250,000 people will die, while the worldwide toll will be far greater still than this.