Nieuws van de afdeling

20 April 2011

Senate to government: Hands off the European Court of Human Rights

The government’s plan to tie the hands of the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) can now, thanks to an overwhelming vote in the Senate, be binned. A huge majority of Senators voted to express the view that Foreign Minister Uri Rosenthal had presented no argument that could possibly persuade them to approve his plan to interfere in the jurisdiction of Europe’s highest court. SP Senator Tiny Kox describes himself as ‘delighted’ by the vote. “The Senate has taken a firm stand in favour of the unique protection afforded to all Europeans on the basis of the European Convention on Human Rights and the fact that they can go to the ECHR in Strasbourg to enforce these rights. The government should be ashamed of itself.”

19 April 2011

De Jong: campaign against EU economic ‘six-pack’

The SP in the European Parliament will be campaigning against the EU’s crisis package. Dubbed the ‘economic six-pack’, the package was approved today in the EP Economic Committee. SP Euro-MP Dennis de Jong said that the six-pack ‘will only lead to austerity and wage restraint, and the Netherlands will get nothing from it but a massive hangover. Brussels should keep its talons off our pensions, wages and public spending.’

15 April 2011

Council of Europe: Arab world deserves support

The Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) is next week sending the presidents of its five political groups to Tunisia for talks with the country’s acting president and representatives of the revolutionary movement which, after thirty years of dictatorship, brought an end to Ben Ali’s rule. Amongst the political group presidents making the trip will be SP Senator Tiny Kox, head of the United European Left in the assembly. ‘Europe has done a great deal that is bad in relation to the Aran world,’ says Kox. 'We’re going to look at whether we can now better cooperate.'

14 April 2011

Atom bombs in our countries undermine nuclear disarmament

On 14th and 15th April NATO Foreign Ministers meet in Berlin. The operation in Libya, Unified Protector, will undoubtedly dominate a great deal of the discussion. But the implementation of the alliance’s new Strategic Concept is also on the agenda. This new Strategic Concept was approved in November 2010. It left, however, a number of crucial questions unanswered. These principally concern the further elaboration and the implementation of NATO’s nuclear policy: what to do with the American strategic nuclear weapons which continue to be stored in Western Europe and in Turkey, to mention only one of these questions.

13 April 2011

Six questions to Dennis de Jong on new SP campaign: ‘The talons of Europe’

The big corporations and the right-wing parties have done it again: the European institutions and heads of government are falling over each other to present proposals to lower wages, demolish pensions, and reduce spending on health care and social provision. Even the continued existence of the Netherlands’ system of negotiated collective labour agreements (CAOs) and of the trade union movement itself are under threat. SP Euro-MP Dennis de Jong has launched the campaign ‘The talons of Europe’ in response.

13 April 2011

De Jong: European Commission proposals on internal market demand concrete action

The SP European Parliament group has welcomed proposals for the internal market presented today by the European Commission, but sees them as containing far too little that is concrete. The Commission has, the SP notes, done a good job of identifying a number of major problems with the internal market, including the need for improved protection of social rights, for faster credit for small businesses, and for specific European rules governing not-for-profit undertakings. Commenting on the proposals, SP Euro-MP Dennis de Jong says, “All these problems must be solved, but as to how this will be achieved, I am waiting in anticipation for the Commission’s concrete proposals.’

International