Nieuws van de afdeling

1 June 2013

'Action now on Armenia and Azerbaijan' says Council of Europe

Twenty-five years after the bloody war over Nagorno Karabach, Armenia and Azerbaijan, as current and next holders of the Council of Europe’s rotating six-month presidency, must make extra efforts to arrive at a peaceful settlement of this dangerous conflict. This call, an initiative of SP Senator Tiny Kox, was issued this week by the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE), in which are represented forty-seven European states.

1 June 2013

Council of Europe demands humane prisons policy

The existence of overcrowded prisons in many European countries represents a transgression of human rights.

31 May 2013

Taboo-breaking meeting on EU officials held at European Parliament

Feelings ran high during today’s meeting on European officials organised by the SP. A representative of a Brussels-based union of officials said with a sigh that ‘even if we halved our salaries, the public would still hate us.’ As SP Euro-MP Dennis de Jong points out, ‘everyone at the meeting had to acknowledge that there’s a serious problem – high-earning senior EU officials arouse the anger of the public. At the same time there has been in recent years no fundamental discussion of what kind of EU administrative apparatus is necessary. Today that’s finally been put on to the agenda.’

30 May 2013

Fraudulent bills must be tackled at EU level

Large numbers of businesses are plagues by fraudulent bills sent by criminals looking to extract money for sham products or services. In the Netherlands the organisation of smaller firms, MKB-Nederland, has been cooperating with the NGO ‘Steunpunt Acquisitiefraude’ (literally, ‘support point acquisition fraud’) to combat these practices. Steupoint Acquisitiefraude describes itself as a foundation which offers participants legal assistance and preventive advice on various kinds of fraud. SP Euro-MP Dennis de Jong explains that this service, though valuable, is limited because ‘many of these fraudulent bills are sent from outside the country. For this reason EU member states need to improve their cooperation in order to address the problem via a reporting point for each country. That’s not only important for the firms who would know whose door to knock on, as a central reporting point for each country would mean also that these could more easily share data and successful working methods.’

29 May 2013

European Commission recommendations are bad news for working people and small firms

The European Commission today presented a number of country-specific recommendations in the framework of the so-called European Semester, a new system of ‘economic governance’ under which eurozone countries will be obliged to present their budgetary and economic policies to the Commission for approval. The aim is to ensure that these should be coordinated in advance of implementation and that they are in line with both the Stability and Growth Pact and the Europe 2020 strategy. What is not new, however, as SP Euro-MP Dennis de Jong points out, is that ‘the European Commission is sticking to its austerity policies despite it now being clear that these will only make the economic crisis worse. Not only that, but they want to force through their long-cherished dream of Americanising the labour market in Europe, while for small- and medium-sized businesses also they have nothing good to offer.’

29 May 2013

SP leader Emile Roemer: ‘Government must reject Brussels’ kamikaze politics’

In SP leader Emile Roemer’s view, the European Commission’s recommendations for the Netherlands’ economy are completely misguided. ‘Six to seven billion in additional spending cuts next year adds up to kamikaze politics. I expect the government to reject these recommendations. If they don’t do so, they’ll be heading straight for higher unemployment, more demands for income support, and greater deficits. In which case, as far as I’m concerned it would be better if the government were to resign.’

International