Nieuws van de afdeling

22 April 2011

SP Senator Tiny Kox on working visit to Tunis: Libyan war menacing Tunisian revolution

‘Tunisia is continuing to build peacefully on its revolution. On 24th July the Tunisian people will go to the polling booths for their very first free elections. But the war in Libya threatens the progress made in Tunisia. Large numbers of refugees, little trade and falling tourism mean that the economy is in a wretched state. And that also carries political risks.’ This was how SP Senator Tiny Kox, president of the United European Left in the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) summarised the situation in Tunisia. As part of a Council of Europe delegation which included the heads of each of the PACE political groups, Kox this week visited the country where in January the Arab Spring began with the forcing out of the dictator Ben Ali after twenty-three years of rule.

20 April 2011

Euro-MPs to investigate Niger Delta issue

The meeting at the European Parliament

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.

International