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25 January 2013

Council of Europe: action against modern slavery

People-smuggling is the fastest-growing form of organised crime, with an estimated turnover of €35 billion per annum. ‘This horrific abuse of the most elementary human rights should be at the very top of the political agenda, certainly in Europe, where every citizen should be protected by the European Convention on Human Rights,’ said SP Senator Tiny Kox in Strasbourg today, where a resolution against modern slavery put forward by the SP and others in the European United Left group won unanimous support.

23 January 2013

Van Bommel, like Cameron, wants EU referendum

Prime Minister Mark Rutte should take a leaf out of the book of his British counterpart David Cameron and organise a referendum on the future of the European Union. In doing so he would be joining Cameron in expressing the desire to retrieve powers and strengthen the position of national parliaments. So says SP Member of Parliament Harry van Bommel in response to today’s speech from the British Tory leader. 'It would be stupid to view dissatisfaction as an exclusively British phenomenon. In the whole of Europe people are fed up with a Brussels bureaucracy which is destroying prosperity at breakneck speed. The present course is not inevitable and the government should offer the Netherlands a choice when it comes to our future in the EU. Not over membership per se but rather over the steps being taken in the direction of a federal Europe.’

23 January 2013

SP supports workers over equal pay for equal work

Today thousands of workers from different EU member states demonstrated in Brussels for equal pay for equal work, regardless of nationality or country of origin.

22 January 2013

De Jong: tighter monitoring of European Parliament spending could save millions

The European Parliament this morning debated its 2011 expenditure accounts. Commenting on the debate, SP Euro-MP Dennis de Jong said: ‘In addition to a more than ample salary and reimbursement of expenses, every Euro-MP receives €4,300 per month for general expenditure. No receipts are required to be handed over for this, which makes the system exceptionally vulnerable to fraud. I’ve proposed that this should be monitored, because I suspect that MEPs are unjustly receiving €20 million as a result of this sloppiness.’

22 January 2013

Council of Europe will now refer to ‘Palestine’

From this week onwards the name Palestine will adorn the office of the Palestinian delegation at the Council of Europe in Strasbourg. Following Palestine’s recognition as a ‘non-member state’ by the United Nations, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) will also henceforth refer to ‘Palestine’. A request for this change from the Palestinian Parliament has been answered positively by the Assembly, a fact which SP Senator Tiny Kox, Chair of the United Left Group in PACE, announced on the first day of its initial meeting of 2013.

20 January 2013

Five questions on Mali to SP’s Jasper van Dijk

There is still a great deal of uncertainty surrounding the conflict in Mali. We put five questions on the political and military situation there to SP Member of Parliament Jasper van Dijk.

International