International

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.

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.”