Nieuws van de afdeling

23 September 2005

EU Common Agricultural Policy must be scrapped

A review of European agriculture subsidies, which account for more than 40 percent of the entire EU budget, is urgently needed. These subsidies go in great part to major corporations such as Schiphol Airport, Mars, Heineken and DSM. The lion's share is paid to the very biggest farmers and to transnational food and transport companies, while at the same time small farmers both within the EU and in agriculture-dependent developing countries are disadvantaged.

22 September 2005

EU exports banned asbestos to Ukraine

The European Union continues to export ever-increasing quantities of asbestos to the Ukraine, despite the fact that its manufacture and use are now banned across the 25 EU member states. Poland and Hungary are amongst the countries selling their old stock of asbestos eastwards. This scandal was revealed by Dmytro Skrylnikov of the Ukrainian Association of Environmental Law, one of the speakers at the Asbestos Conference, organised by the SP's European Parliament group and taking place in Brussels today and tomorrow.

17 September 2005

Chaos at Afghan elections

The SP will not be sending an observer to tomorrow's elections in Afghanistan. A last-minute invitation to go to Kabul received this week from the NATO parliamentary assembly by SP Senator Tiny Kox has been turned down. Explaining his decision, Senator Kox said “If Sunday's elections turn out to be anything like the organisation regarding the sending of observers, we can expect complete chaos.”

16 September 2005

European Asbestos Conference: Policy, Status & Human Rights, Brussels, Thursday 22 and Friday 23 September, 2005

The GUE/NGL European Parliamentary Group is hosting the European Asbestos Conference: Policy, Status & Human Rights on Thursday 22 and Friday 23 September, 2005, at the European Parliament - Brussels, Room ASP 1 G3.

16 September 2005

Van Bommel: ‘UN summit has failed’

The high level deliberations on the reform of the United Nations have already proved a major disappointment, according to Harry van Bommel, member of parliament and foreign affairs specialist for the SP. “My initial optimism, based on the clear plans outlined by Kofi Annan, had already been greatly diluted, by amongst other things the position taken by the American representative John Bolton. The original conclusion that the world had need of greatly improved co-operation and that the UN must for that reason be reformed and strengthened has not to any extent been transformed from words into deeds.”

15 September 2005

The Tragedy of Asbestos

Employers who expose their workers to deadly dangers – firms which mislead the public authorities and manipulate research findings – corporations responsible for hundreds of thousands of victims. This is the picture presented in The tragedy of asbestos, a book which tells the story of a hundred years of the asbestos industry. In the Netherlands alone to date 7000 people have died from asbestos-related cancer, a figure which will grow by around 12,000 in the next 25 years. In western Europe 250,000 people will die, while the worldwide toll will be far greater still than this.

International