International

On 8th July, the last day before the summer recess, the Senate must pronounce judgement on the Treaty of Lisbon, the successor to the European Constitution, killed in action in 2005. Where the government and the lower house of Parliament granted each other three months to sort out the tangle of proposed amendments, protocols and declarations formulated last year in Lisbon, the Senate has been given just three short weeks to come up with a considered verdict. In order to make this possible, the government answered in absolute record time – within three days – two hundred detailed questions from the Senate. On the same day that these answers arrived, the Premier informed the Senate that a comparable number of questions over the Netherlands' involvement in the war in Iraq could be expected to take six (!) months. The Premier's extreme haste in the case of the Lisbon Treaty demonstrates how fearful he is now that doubts are growing all over Europe as to the direction and organisation of the European Union.