Nieuws van de afdeling

12 March 2009

Secretary for EU affairs 'capitulating to Euro-idiocy'

Dennis de Jong, No 1. on the SP list for the approaching European Parliament elections, says that he finds it 'incomprehensible' that Secretary of State for European Affairs Frans Timmermans should play down the huge waste of money involved in the European Parliament's obligatory monthly trek from Brussels – where almost all of its real work is done – to Strasbourg, its purely symbolic seat, where roughly every four weeks it is forced to hold its plenary meeting. Timmermans expressed the view yesterday that this monthly circus should not distract us from recognising how much useful work the European Parliament does. "This is the latest of numerous proofs of the Dutch government's flabby attitude to Europe," De Jong says.

11 March 2009

Postal workers paying bill for EU liberalisation pressure

SP Member of Parliament Sharon Gesthuizen today attacked the government's intention to open the postal market to competition from 1st April. This liberalisation will lead to a wage cut of 15% for postal delivery workers and savage wage-based competition. “We're led to believe that everyone should be able to earn the minimum wage and that there should be no competition around working conditions or conditions of service," says Gesthuizen. "Meanwhile, postal workers are losing hundreds of euros a month and hardly any of the postal workers in the new firms which are entering the sector are paid the minimum wage."

8 March 2009

Liberalisation of health services by the back door: EU cross-border health care directive

Thanks to a successful intervention by the SP, in 2004 health care was excluded from the EU Services Directive (aka the Bolkestein Directive, after the ultra-neoliberal Dutch politician who, as a European Commissioner, fathered the measure). Now, however, the European Commission has brought forward a proposal for a new directive on patients' rights in relation to cross-border health care. In our eyes this looks suspiciously like an attempt to reintroduce the Bolkestein Directive by the back door. We must not allow this neoliberal measure to sneak on to our statute books under the guise of aiding patient mobility.

6 March 2009

SP: "Foreign Minister Must Attend UN Anti-Racism Summit"

According to SP Member of Parliament and foreign affairs spokesman Harry van Bommel, Foreign Minister Maxime Verhagen should not be threatening to boycott the coming UN anti-racism summit. Verhagen did just that in Geneva this week, saying that he would shun the event if the closing declaration was not drastically amended. In the minister's view, the aim of the proposed declaration appears to be 'to brand Israel, and condemn the West for slavery and the colonial past." Yet the SP notes that the text proposed by a UN working party is based for the most part on wording close to that of previous UN declarations.

3 March 2009

Palestine's wilting carnations

Israel is continuing to impose an economic boycott on Gaza. Forty million carnations, grown with Dutch financial support, have been stuck inside the enclave since 10th February because they cannot be exported without crossing Israeli territory. The boycott is a reaction to the seizure in 2006 of an Israeli soldier, Gilat Shalit.

3 March 2009

Israel refuses to allow winner of Dutch human rights prize to travel to the Netherlands

The SP is urging Foreign Minister Maxime Verhagen to put pressure on Israel to allow human rights activist Shawin Jarbarin to travel to the Netherlands. The director of the Palestinian human rights organisation Al-Haq has been invited to the Netherlands to receive in person the 'Geuzenpenning' (literally, beggars' mite) a Dutch award given to persons or organisations who have fought for democracy and against dictatorship, racism and discrimination. The award takes its name from De Geuzen, 'The Beggars', a resistance group active in Vlaardingen, Maassluis and Rotterdam during the Nazi occupation suffered by the Netherlands in World War Two. It is presented by the city of Vlaardingen. Israel is refusing to allow Shawin Jarbarin to travel.

International