Nieuws van de afdeling

16 April 2010

Weeklog Kartika Liotard: Attracting Attention

Here in Brussels everything turns on the question of attention. You want the public to know about a social problem, to attract attention to it so that political pressure is created. But how do you make the problem visible? Well, you can do it by demonstrating, as the postal workers did this week, shouting at the tops of their voices on the square outside the European Parliament to show their anger at the liberalisation of the postal market.

15 April 2010

European sport subsidies – another waste of money

SP Member of Parliament Renske Leijten is urging Sports Minister Ab Klink to oppose the establishment of a subsidised European 'Sport Action Programme'. "Encouraging sport sounds like a good thing, but it's something which each EU member state should do for itself. Giving member states money back to spend on sport, money which they've paid to the EU in the first place, is completely senseless."

15 April 2010

Van Bommel urges condemnation of Israeli deportation policy

SP Member of Parliament Harry van Bommel is seriously concerned about a military decree which will allow the Israeli armed forces to remove people from the West Bank of the Jordan. Van Bommel, the Socialist Party's foreign affairs spokesman, today asked Foreign Minister Maxime Verhagen for his comments on the content and implications of this decree, a demand which won the backing of the Parliamentary Committee on Foreign Affairs. “This move by Israel is in conflict with international law and for that reason the Dutch government should be giving its opinion on it," says Van Bommel. "I'm calling on the Foreign Minister to condemn this measure."

14 April 2010

SP joins postal workers in action demanding halt to liberalisation

utch postal workers demonstrated in Brussels today, joining around five hundred colleagues from eighteen European countries to demand a moratorium on the liberalisation of the postal market. Member of the Netherlands' national parliament Sharon Gesthuizen, European Parliament SP group chair Dennis de Jong and some fifty Dutch posties were present at the demonstration. Addressing the crowd, Sharon Gesthuizen brought the message 'halt liberalisation in your countries while you still can', while earlier in the day Dennis de Jong spoke with the European trade union organisation about the proposal for a moratorium.

13 April 2010

Parliament supports SP motion to strengthen international labour law

Dutch firms which wish to win state support to operate abroad will from now on be obliged to demonstrate that they adhere to international labour law. In addition, they must show how they act to prevent transgressions of, for example, environmmental and human rights norms in distant countries. The national parliament today gave its backing to two proposals to this effect from SP Member of Parliament Sharon Gesthuizen.

12 April 2010

Italy gets down to work with SP report on waste

The SP report 'Waste has a future', by member of the national parliament Remi Poppe, and Euro-MP Kartika Liotard, is finding its way to decision-makers around Europe. An official of the Italian Embassy in the Netherlands contacted the SP earlier in the month to ask for a copy of the English translation, and last weekend she was in touch again to confirm that it will be used by an Italian committee of enquiry into illegal waste processing and transport.

International