International

Dutch State Bank Fortis involved in bribery Italian politicians. Francesco Corallo - gambling boss of the island of Sint Maarten - gave Berlusconi a big gambling contract. The banker of Corallo is Fortis Bank, a bank which was bought by the Dutch government in 2008  in connection with the banking crisis. Fortis Bank kept on being Francesco Corallo's banker, even though he was wanted for bribery and tax evasion.

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On March 15th 2017, the Dutch parliamentary elections resulted in 14 seats for the SP, of which 6 are new entries into the parliament. The party is now the largest one on the left.

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In the view of SP leader Emile Roemer, there should be no place in the Netherlands for the bizarre propaganda circus that Turkish president Recep Erdoğan is touring around Europe in the runup to a referendum which may give him almost unlimited power.

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Every year, the Netherlands loses €5.5 billion per annum as a direct result of tax deals with multinationals, every one of them a gift from Labour Party Finance Minister and chair of the Eurogroup Jeroen Dijsselbloem. For the same money we could add 3,000 men and women to the teaching staff of universities, 6,000 police or prison officers, and at least 70.000 additional health care staff. This would still leave us enough money to introduce decent maintenance grants for all students, reduce social housing rents by €400 a year and create tens of thousands of social workplaces for people who would not otherwise be able to find jobs. All of this would be possible if we were to put a stop to these tax deals.

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This week the European Commission published its national reports, including one on the Netherlands. This is done in the framework of ‘economic governance’, and they’ve got an opinion about everything: the housing market, spending on health care, the labour market, and public investments. Not everything they write is nonsense, but it’s striking how this year’s recommendations are at odds with the policies previously propagated by the Commission. It demonstrates once again that the European Commission is incapable of running member states. Better to leave that task to national governments and parliaments.

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On 21st February SP Euro-MP Dennis de Jong and Ellen Verhoog, a member of the SP’s European Parliament staff, went on a working visit to lorry drivers to find out why there were so many vacancies in the trade and so little interest in it from young Dutch people.

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Summary of the SP election manifesto for March 2017

The Netherlands has more millionaires than ever before, yet more than a million people can't afford to pay the costs of the health care they need. The difference between the big earners at the top and the rest of the population has been deliberately widened by this government. Prime Minister Mark Rutte has taken good care of directors and executives, of the banks and multinationals. In the wake of the crisis this elite is richer than it was before it. Yet for most people, vital services such as affordable care and social security, have only declined. Read more

The European Parliament's vote in support of CETA, the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement with Canada, was not unexpected but was in the SP's view disappointing. CETA will come into force as early as the beginning of April, but has still to be ratified by the member states.

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The report from SP Euro-MP Dennis de Jong on the European Commission's advisory expert groups was today adopted with almost unanimous support (663-16, with 13 abstentions) by the European Parliament. “I'm very pleased with the enormous support for transparency shown by my fellow MEPs,” says De Jong. Referring to the Dutch Commissioner in charge of the portfolio on transparency, he notes that “Frans Timmermans will now have to take his responsibility and ensure that an end is put to the dominant position of major corporations in the Commission's hundreds of expert groups. We saw in the investigation into Dieselgate how harmful it can be when in expert groups like CARS21, the industry dominates and environmental and consumers' organisations hardly get a look in.”

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