Nieuws van de afdeling

17 February 2010

Ban on cluster bombs comes into force August 1st

SP Member of Parliament Krista van Velzen is pleased that there is now broad support for an international ban on cluster munitions. This week UN chief Ban Ki-Moon announced that the treaty banning these weapons has now been ratified by thirty countries and that this means that on 1st August it will acquire the force of law.

16 February 2010

Kant: 'No confidence that mistakes on Iraq won't be repeated'

"On the basis of the conclusions that this government has drawn from the Iraq report, the SP parliamentary group can have no confidence that the same mistakes won't be made again,” said SP leader Agnes Kant in the debate on the government's reaction to the Davids Commission's report on the decision-making process which led to the N Netherlands' political support for the war in 2003. “The cabinet has learnt lessons, but these concern in every case the form, and not the content. There is no acknowledgement that the government of the day gave its support to an illegal war."

16 February 2010

SP: European Commission proposal on banks 'irresponsible'

SP European Parliamentary group leader Dennis de Jong has called the European Commission's proposal aimed at maintaining Europe's 'megabanks' "irresponsible". De Jong put a question on the matter to the European Commission today. The SP believes that banks should be split into secure savings banks for the public in general, and 'speculative' banks. The former would be obliged to avoid risk, while the latter would be allowed to indulge in riskier investments. "While the entire world wants to see better regulation of the financial system, the Commission is looking to maintain the existing principles of global banking. This gives a glimpse of the huge gulf between Brussels, which always favours the interests of the bankers, and the citizens of the member states who have had enough of people behaving irresponsibly with their savings. For the SP, there can be no question of 'business as usual' in banking."

15 February 2010

The dark side of the euro

Things certainly aren’t going smoothly with the euro. The problems are piling up. Differences between the participating countries are simply too great. A single European monetary policy isn’t enough, it seems. The example of Greece, taken to the cleaners by this business, proves that. The problems did not begin yesterday. On the contrary. Things were actually going wrong as soon as the euro was introduced. In the Maastricht Treaty, which established the rules for the euro’s introduction, could be found a number of agreements, dealing, for example, with budget deficits and state debt. Already numerous countries have gone against these agreements, including France and Germany. Because no real penalties were established, each country can go its own way.

15 February 2010

NATO seeks new strategy, but so far fails to find one

In November NATO’s member states will meet in Lisbon to agree a new strategic concept for the world’s most powerful military alliance. What must be determined at that meeting is for what purpose NATO exists and where and under what future circumstances the alliance will wish to intervene. That there long been a lack of clarity over these questions was evident this weekend at the NATO parliamentary assembly in Brussels. SP Senator Tiny Kox, a member of the assembly, used the opportunity presented by the meeting in Belgium’s capital to call on the parliamentarians of the twenty-eight member states to ensure that not only governments but also MPs are involved in debate over where, in relation to NATO, we should be heading.

15 February 2010

Weeklog Kartika Liotard: A question of persistence…

If you're a woman I wish you in advance a happy 2010! In advance? But isn't it February already? Equal pay has been in the European treaties since 1957. Since 1957 ... Yet this principle is still not generally put into practice. The European Parliament has worked out that a woman must on average work 418 calendar days in order to earn as much as a man will in a year. So for women 2010 begins just fifty-three days late, on Monday 22nd February..

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