International

SP Member of Parliament Harry van Bommel, speaking on behalf of the SP today on Het Plein, the square in front of the parliament building in The Hague, expressed the party’s solidarity with the Tibetan, Uyghur and other peoples who are oppressed in China. Earlier in the day he asked Foreign Minister Uri Rosenthal to ensure that the Dutch Ambassador for Human Rights would visit these peoples. The minister undertook to do all he could to make this possible.

The European Parliament has approved the draft European Union Regulation designed to deal with speculation in exchange losses, albeit to an inadequate extent. Many aspects of the problem of speculation are, however, not subject to any regulation. Commenting on the measure, SP Euro-MP Dennis De Jong said: 'I’m enthusiastic about the ban on speculating in exchange losses on shares and bonds which you don’t actually own, so-called naked short selling. The way in which this will work in practice is, however, left to the European supervisory authority and in these sorts of cases every detail counts. When the proposals are presented at the end of this year I’ll be taking a close look at them.’