International

The safety of lorry drivers on European motorways is increasingly under pressure. SP Euro-MP Dennis de Jong and PvdA (Dutch Labour Party) MEP Agnes Jongerius today received a petition signed by 8,000 drivers which sounds the alarm bells. “It’s scandalous that national governments aren’t even doing anything about providing secured parking for trucks, while drivers are faced with increasing violence and criminality,” says De Jong. “The governments of the Netherlands, Belgium and France are together responsible for the major routes between our country and Calais, but are doing far too little. Today, as well as accepting the petition, Agnes Jongerius and I have also written to Dutch Infrastructure Minister Melanie Schultz van Haegen and her Belgian and French counterparts urging them to meet urgently to discuss and take measures to guarantee drivers’ safety. These should include not only secured parking places but also an alarm line for drivers that really works, as well as the police and courts making it a priority to tackle incidents quickly and effectively.”

Asylum procedures must be speeded up, and improvements effected to the ‘kinderpardon’, the system for dealing with children who have long been resident in the Netherlands but who have no legal right to be here. In making this point, SP Member of Parliament Jasper van Dijk was reacting to the deportation of the mother of three children who have already lived for nine years in the Netherlands . “This distressing deportation is the result of the fact that such long-lasting procedures are possible at all,” he said. “The children are the victims of a bad policy. This could be prevented by ensuring that families who have no right to be here are dealt with more quickly and that extended procedures with no chance of success are opposed. This would mean that something could also be done about a kinderpardon system which actually works, by giving parents who have made themselves available to be returned to their countries and the children of such parents, children who have lived here for more than five years, a residence permit.”