Nieuws van de afdeling

15 April 2005

Ban on import of GM maize “small victory”

Earlier this week the European Commission, in response to a question from the SP's team in the European Parliament, said that it was not minded to introduce a ban on imports of genetically modified maize from the United States. Yet today, to the delight of Euro-MP Kartika Liotard and national MP Krista van Velzen, who has persistently questioned agriculture minister Cees Veerman on the subject, that is precisely what the Commission has done.

7 April 2005

'No relaxation of EU air quality standards'

Measures to improve air quality in the Netherlands must be taken as a matter of urgency or the country will be unable to build anything new. New building projects are routinely cancelled by the Council of State because they would lead to a further deterioration of air quality in an overcrowded land. Secretary of State for the Environment Pieter Van Geel's response is to try to have strict European air quality standards relaxed, but this attempt has now failed, and new thinking is needed.

6 April 2005

Dismantle Trident missile warheads

SP Member of Parliament Krista van Velzen is urging Minister for Foreign Affairs Ben Bot to bring pressure to bear on the American government to dismantle W76 nuclear warheads as quickly as possible. Stories in a number of newspapers including The New York Times state that these Trident missile warheads could be “unstable in action”. Yet these weapons are deployed on submarines throughout the world.

19 March 2005

Huge protest against plans to sell Europe to highest bidder

Today almost 100,000 people marched through the streets of Brussels. They came from Belgium, France, Germany, Italy and the Netherlands to demonstrate against corporate-sponsored policies based on cuts in social and welfare provision and against the formation of a European superstate. The atmosphere was reminiscent of the enormous demonstrations in Amsterdam on 2nd October, when 300,000 turned out to protest against the Dutch government’s policies. The great majority of the crowd in Brussels was made up of the working population of Europe.

17 March 2005

Pay rise for Euro-MPs: is today’s fat wage packet not fat enough?

The SP has called Foreign Minister Johan Remkes not to lend his support to calls from Members of the European parliament for higher pay.

15 March 2005

European Parliament strips Services Directive to the bone

Today, the Environment and Public Health Committee of the European Parliament held a vote on a large number of proposed amendments to the Directive on Services in the Internal Market, the Bolkestein Directive. By the time the Committee had done its work, there was almost nothing left to amend. A majority of members turned out to be in favour of throwing out the so-called Country of Origin – the heart of the Directive – principle in its entirety. In addition, a proposal completely to exclude health care from the scope of the Directive won a clear majority. Kartika Liotard, Member of the European Parliament for the Socialist Party of the Netherlands (SP), and ‘draftswoman’ in charge of coordinating the Environment Committee’s report said, “This is a big victory. I was quite hopeful that the vote would go well, but this exceeded all our expectations.”

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