Nieuws van de afdeling

12 September 2014

SP Senator Kox to lead election observers in divided Bosnia

The Council of Europe, responding to a request from the Bosnian Parliament, will send a mission to the elections on 12th October with the purpose of observing and assessing their conduct. The mission will be arriving in a country divided by ethnic conflicts and social differences and one in which extensive damage was caused by recent flooding. The observers’ team will be led by SP Senator Tiny Kox.

11 September 2014

Van Bommel: military campaign against ISIS will lead to more violence

On Wednesday evening the Dutch Parliament debated the rise of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS). Below is the text of the speech by SP foreign policy spokesman Harry van Bommel which formed part of the debate.

10 September 2014

Van Bommel: ‘Palestinian MPs should be in Parliament, not in prison’

SP Member of Parliament Harry van Bommel believes that Israel should immediately free the Palestinian parliamentarians which it has taken prisoner. ‘As things stand some thirty-six Members of the Palestinian Parliament are in Israeli detention,’ notes Van Bommel. ‘That’s completely unacceptable. They should not in my opinion be locked up, but must be free to do their work as representatives of their people.’

9 September 2014

De Jong: Bring in a ‘solidarity test’ for new EU legislation

The SP is extremely concerned about the growing gap between rich and poor in the Netherlands and in Europe as a whole. In part this division is consequence, direct or indirect, of European Union legislation. SP Euro-MP Dennis de Jong today responded to this in the European Parliament by calling for a ‘solidarity test’ to be introduced and applied to all new EU legislative proposals. 'The effects on the regulatory burden and the general economic and financial impact of a proposed new law are subject to a great deal of attention,’ De Jong says, ‘but what the implications might be of, for example, the marketization of public services for social cohesion is not included in this. A solidarity test could change that.’

5 September 2014

Kox: Lift Israeli blockade of Gaza

'If the Israeli blockade of Gaza is not lifted soon, the situation of the two million Palestinians there will become untenable. With the chance that more people will flee in across the Mediterranean Sea in small boats, in search of a safer place than Gaza, the biggest open air prison in the world.’ This was SP Senator Tiny Kox’s response to alarming reports from international experts to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE).

4 September 2014

Withdraw promise to Ukraine that it can join NATO

The question of how the military alliance should react to the rapidly growing tensions in and around Ukraine will take centre stage in this week’s NATO summit in Wales. And while what ought to be at the forefront is the taking of de-escalating measures, fears are growing that instead, more fuel will be added to the fire.

International