International

The Budget Committee of the European Parliament today rejected the SP’s proposal to reduce wastefulness within the European Union institutions. Expressing disappointment at the outcome, SP Euro-MP Dennis de Jong said: ‘I didn’t of course expect that all of my proposals would survive, as the European Parliament isn’t famous for criticising its own spending. But it’s still disappointing that Euro-MPs aren’t prepared – and this happens time after time – to do anything about the high rate of “reimbursement” of expenses, which don’t, moreover, even have to be accounted for. On the prestige project “The House of Europe” and the unnecessary European Parliament TV channel, they still don’t have anything to say.’

Wednesday saw a demonstration against the deportation of 21-year old Wime, who comes from Angola. Wime has been in the Netherlands since he was ten years old, but does not fall within the rules laid down by the child amnesty, under which certain groups of people who entered the country as minors may be given residency rights, as it is six months too late for him to make an application. Wime is not the only person, moreover, for whom this is the case. ‘This young man was one of those children who arrived in the Netherlands just too late to be considered for the general amnesty in 2007, but who are just too old to qualify for the child amnesty,’ explains SP Member of Parliament Sharon Gesthuizen. ‘Yet these children have grown up in our country and feel that they are Dutch. Their country of origin is by now unknown to them; they simply aren’t rooted there and feel themselves to be at home here.’