Last week an opinion piece by Kathalijne Buitenweg, Member of the European Parliament for the small pro-EU Dutch parliamentary party Green Left, appeared in a number of regional newspapers. Buitenweg's article dealt with the imminent European Union directive on combating discrimination on the grounds of belief, age, disability or sexual orientation. In it she expressed her concerns over the fact that in the national parliament this directive is meeting resistance and that some of this resistance is coming from the SP. The nuances of this 'resistance', however, escaped her, as the SP's only problem with the proposal concerns 'subsidiarity' rather than its actual content. In plain words, the SP does not see this as an appropriate measure for the European Union to take, and believes that it must remain the responsibility of member states, every one of which has already signed the European Declaration of Human Rights, and of our own national authorities, in a country which already outlaws all of these forms of discrimination.
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On the return journey from the US to the Netherlands last week, I had the 'honour' to be subjected to a thorough search by the American customs. In addition to the famous body scan, my shoes were investigated with a special apparatus and the contents of my rucksack were examined.