Nieuws van de afdeling

9 September 2008

Independent enquiry into torture in Uruzgan needed

SP Member of Parliament Harry van Bommel wants to see an independent enquiry established into alleged torture of Afghans in the province of Uruzgan. Acts of torture are said to have been perpetrated by people under Dutch command. The Independent Afghan Human Rights Commission (AIHRC), based in the provincial capital Tarin Kowt, has access to six declarations by people who state that they were tortured, the daily newspaper De Pers reported on Tuesday.

4 September 2008

Help Africa fight dumping

The SP is urging the European Union to take action against market distortion in West Africa by Dutch trading companies. The Dutch firms are dumping tons of cheap meat on to the West African market, primarily consisting of pigs' trotters, tails and other parts of the animal that can be sold for very little in Europe. African farmers are seeing their business ruined by these dumping practices. In a Dutch television programme broadcast by the popular current affairs series Netwerk on Tuesday evening, the impact on Cameroon was portrayed: once flourishing pig farms now look out on scenes of cheerless desolation. Locally produced meat is dearer on the market there than are Europe's frozen surpluses.

4 September 2008

EU rules meddle in the wrong places

'Brussels' is a rewarding target for ridicule. The EU rules on how bent a banana must be or how straight a cucumber form an image in the public's mind of superfluous interference, of a meddlesome Brussels. Europe too often interferes in the wrong areas and acts regularly as a source of obstructiveness, frustrating national plans.

3 September 2008

EU subsidies used to promote eating of cruelly-reared chicken

SP Euro-MP Kartika Liotard is giving her support to a Dutch animal welfare group, Wakker Dier (Animal Alert), in its attempt to halt the payment of subsidies to the chicken industry for its advertising campaign in the Netherlands. This campaign, whose slogan is that chicken is "the most versatile cut of meat", is part-financed by Brussels, which the group finds unacceptable. Kartika Liotard is putting questions to the European Commission on this scandalous waste of taxpayers' money.

3 September 2008

Compulsory tendering of schoolbooks is costing schools money which could be better spent

In both the European Parliament and the national parliament in The Hague, the SP has now raised the matter of the obligatory putting out to tender of schoolbooks. Euro-MP Erik Meijer wants to know what Brussels is going to do to lighten this administrative and legal burden on schools.

3 September 2008

No Means No: ‘The Treaty is dead’

He came from Ireland solely to explain to the Euro-MPs flooding in to hear him that the Irish 'No' meant 'No'. "The Treaty is dead," he said some five times, because there are even now politicians who believe the Irish people's decision was a piece of advice from which you can deviate. The Irish pronounced themselves, in June 2008 in a completely clear fashion, to be against the Treaty of Lisbon. "They seem to be immune to the ballot box" sighed Declan Ganley. There are politicians who have developed resistance to citizens who think differently to them, to the extent that they are immune to disappointing election results.

International