Nieuws van de afdeling

28 April 2015

SP Senator Kox in Moscow: Stop sanctions and talk!

Foto: SP

After a year of pointless sanctions, Russia and the rest of Europe’s countries need to return to the negotiating table. This is the only way in which the tensions afflicting the continent can be eased and the chance of a greater crisis countered. So said SP Senator Tiny Kox this week in Moscow, during a visit in his role as chair of the United Left in the Council of Europe. Kox was in Russia’s capital for an international conference hosted by the social democratic party Just Russia.

24 April 2015

Bed and Board

The coalition of the right-wing liberals of the VVD and the centre-left PvdA (Labour Party) is to put pressure on local authorities to put an end to their provision of reception and accommodation facilities for asylum seekers whose applications have been refused. In the country’s five biggest cities new centres will replace them, with the sole aim of as quickly as possible getting the failed asylum seekers either on to a plane or on to the streets.

24 April 2015

The Netherlands could help put EU finance on a sounder footing

When the Netherlands takes its turn as president of the European Union in 2016, it should use the opportunity to put an end to the EU’s wasting of money and to the unnecessary pumping of funds from the member states to Brussels and back again.

23 April 2015

Mass grave in the Mediterranean

A massive human tragedy is playing itself out on the Mediterranean Sea, a tragedy which has already been going on for years and which is growing ever worse. The total number of refugees who have drowned runs now to many thousands, all of them of Middle Eastern, North African or sub-Saharan African origin.

21 April 2015

European action plan for boat refugees unsatisfactory

On 20th April the European Union’s Council of Ministers of Foreign Affairs together with its Council of Justice and Home Affairs Ministers agreed a ten-point to address the crisis surrounding refugees who attempt to cross from Africa into Europe by boat. But SP Member of Parliament Sharon Gesthuizen, the party’s spokeswoman on justice, is critical of the plan. ‘The ministers are giving more money to fund operations in the Mediterranean Sea, but just what form these operations will take is unclear,’ she says. ‘I want the first priority now to be the establishment of a reliable system for saving people’s lives.’ SP colleague Euro-MP Dennis de Jong adds that what’s needed are ‘structural solutions: reception and accommodation in the region must be strengthened, but at the same time the EU member states must fulfil their obligations under the UN Convention relating to the Status of Refugees. Refugees have a right to protection.’

20 April 2015

The Billion Euro Man

Foto: Nick.mon

In order to fight the ongoing crisis the European Central Bank is pumping the unimaginable sum of €1.1 billion into the eurozone. Where is this money to come from and precisely where will it go? And, above all, who decides these things? At the same time, social resistance to the institution is growing.

International