Nieuws van de afdeling

9 May 2015

Poland and Estonia still keeping an eye out to the East

By Eric Smaling - In these turbulent times it’s hard to decide which foreign news most preoccupies you. The refugee boats on the Mediterranean Sea, the caliphate of ISIS, the refugee camps in and around Syria, the earthquake in Nepal, Boko Haram, the ever more precarious situation in Yemen, the rapprochement between the US and Cuba, or Ukraine? And without the appalling fate of the MH-17 and its passengers, would Ukraine still stand so high on the list?

7 May 2015

Kox rounds off Turkish pre-election research

SP Senator Tiny Kox, accompanied by four other members of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE), travelled to Turkey to assess the lay of the land in the runup to the approaching elections. They have now completed their pre-election observation and produced a report.

6 May 2015

Digital market must put consumers and small businesses first

European Commissioner Andrus Ansip today published his strategy for the Digital Internal Market, his major area of responsibility. SP Euro-MP Dennis de Jong was critical of the initiative. ‘It’s mainly major corporations which have been urging this, but the strategy is of less importance to the consumer and to smaller firms,’ he said, adding that ‘these are precisely the interests which in this matter it is my task to secure. We should not be reducing protection for the consumer and the small firm must not be saddled with all sorts of bureaucratic rules.’

6 May 2015

New Malmström TTIP proposals are ‘a smokescreen’

Foto: Nemo

Proposals for a new arbitration system in the free trade treaty with the United States are no more than a smokescreen, SP Euro-MP Anne-Marie Mineur said today during a meeting with European Commissioner for External Trade Cecilia Malmström. The Investor-State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) is the most controversial aspect of the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) and a possible stumbling block in the negotiations. Yet the revised version presented today by Malmström does nothing to address the fundamental objections.

30 April 2015

European alcohol strategy is incomprehensible decision by European Parliament

The European Parliament this week voted by a large majority to approve a new strategy on alcohol. A proposal originally intended to improve information to consumers regarding the food value of alcoholic drinks has become a far-reaching health policy aimed at alcohol abuse. This is the umpteenth attempt by the European Union to grab more powers.

29 April 2015

Rana Plaza victims must now be compensated at last

Foto: rijans

Two years on from the disaster at the textile factory in Rana Plaza, not all of the victims have been compensated for the suffering they have undergone. The measures which have been announced have not been fully implemented, and the SP wants to see the ‘naming and shaming’ of the guilty textile manufacturers, as well as the application and monitoring of the 2013 agreement on fire prevention and the safety of buildings.

International