Nieuws van de afdeling

22 June 2011

Mass trade union demonstration against EU economic plans

On Tuesday trade unions demonstrated in Luxembourg against EU plans for economic governance. Media sources gave the figure for participants as 10,000. The right-wing parties in the European Parliament are attempting this week to force through the controversial vote on the package of measures that the Parliament must approve before they can be introduced. Parties of the left share the trade unions’ serious objections to the proposals.

22 June 2011

SP delegation in Athens: Creditor Banks must take losses

Emile Roemer and Ewout Irrgang in Syntagma Square in Athens

22 June 2011

Don’t use crisis as excuse for Brussels’ drive for lower wages

This week the European Parliament and the heads of EU member states’ governments will decide how much power to give Europe over the national economies. Strict rules and tough accords form the basis of the soon to be introduced system of European economic governance. The hue-and-cry over Greece is overshadowing these meetings. These moves mean that Brussels is threatening to sneak in, unnoticed via the back door, rules which will impose wage restraint, leading to a situation in which, over several years, wages will not rise and may even fall.

20 June 2011

Foresight: the Euro Crisis, as seen from a decade ago and more

On the eve of the introduction of Euro notes and coins in 2001 Ewout Irrgang, a young economist and SP activist who would later become the party’s financial spokesman in the Dutch national parliament, was interviewed by the SP monthly, the Tribune: 'The introduction of the Euro is no small thing,’ he said. ‘We are dealing with the biggest monetary experiment in world history. Twelve extremely varied economies will go over, in one fell swoop, to the same currency.’

17 June 2011

A Greek Tragedy

You can say a great deal about the Greek people, but not that they are stupid. They invented democracy, and in science and philosophy we are still living on the inheritance of Greek wisdom. But now, in our times, Greece has become everyone’s whipping boy.

8 June 2011

European Arrest Warrant must be reformed

SP Euro-MP Dennis de Jong is urging European Commissioner Viviane Reding to bring forward proposals for changes to the European arrest warrant. ‘As things stand,’ says De Jong, ‘Dutch citizens run the risk of finding themselves in a situation where they have virtually no rights. I want to see a reform which would mean that an arrest warrant could be refused if conditions in the prisons and other detention facilities in the country issuing it are inhumane. We must not allow any more Dutch citizens to be detained in degrading conditions in other member states of the European Union as a result of an arrest warrant.´

International