International

The SP will vote against any additional loans to Greece and the austerity package which accompanies them. According to party leader Emile Roemer, Greece’s medicine hasn’t worked. ‘I’d go further,’ he says, ‘the medicine for Greece has turned out to be a poison pill. Poverty has grown enormously, half of the young people have no job and wages are down by 37%. The Netherlands could pay for a loan which the Greeks can’t sustain. That the SP will therefore not do.’

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On Wednesday Parliament will debate the new loan agreement between the European Union and Greece. The SP will not be voting in favour of this agreement. ‘Once again the Greeks are being prescribed the bad medicine of inhuman austerity,’ says SP Member of Parliament and parliamentary spokesman on financial affairs Arnold Merkies. ‘This agreement is bad for Greece and bad for the Netherlands.’ We posed Merkies three questions on the accord.

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On the evening of Wednesday June 1st, 2005, the SP gathered in Artis – Amsterdam’s zoo – to celebrate the victory in the referendum on the European Constitution. Two-thirds of Dutch voters had said ‘no’. Not to Europe, but to European politics. The world’s media were also amassed in Artis. Just as I began a live report for Fox News, a punk band began to play.

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Banks fulfil a special role in our society. They are the powerful pivot of worldwide investments. On this rests a major responsibility when it comes to making choices about where they make those investments. Globalisation and financialisation have given banks’ investment policies increasing influence over production chains, workers' rights and the environment, anywhere in the world. At the same time that process has increasingly obscured our view of just where our money is going.

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Last week a popular TV news programme, EenVandaag, once more demonstrated that our country is a tax haven – not for ordinary people, but for multinational corporations which use the Netherlands to avoid paying taxes. Tijmen Lucie investigates.

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It’s enormously disappointing that, as a result of a Russian veto, the UN Security Council has not agreed to the establishment of a special tribunal to investigate the shooting down of flight MH17 above eastern Ukraine. The SP wants assurance that the perpetrators of this crime will be brought to justice and is asking the Dutch government to take the initiative in this. ‘The most important thing is not how the perpetrators are tried, but that they are tried,’ says SP Member of Parliament Ronald van Raak.

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SP Member of Parliament Ronald Van Raak is requesting the government to urge Turkey to cease military action against Kurdish fighters. ‘On Tuesday NATO, at Turkey’s request, will discuss the Turkish military action against Kurdish fighters and ISIS,’ says Van Raak. ‘The Netherlands must deliver the message that it isn’t the Kurds but ISIS and other Al Qaida-like groups who have to be combatted. The Kurds are one of the few groups which is fighting ISIS effectively. Furthermore, it’s of the utmost importance that the peace process with the PKK is revived.’

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The writer Milan Kundera drew a distinction between two types of provincialism. The provincialism of big countries consists of people paying little regard to what comes from abroad, their own affairs being enough; that of small countries, in contrast, proceeds precisely from an excessive esteem for the outside world, a world which is nevertheless seen as strange and out of reach. Hence the tendency of a small nation to closely embrace its important individuals, for these feed its pride and give the people something to cling to.

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Anxiety about the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), the treaty being negotiated between the EU and the US, is ungrounded, Daniël Bosgraaf and Raoul Leerling asserted in the national newspaper De Volkskrant on 23rd July. Yet anyone who takes the facts seriously must conclude that the TTIP would undermine democracy and privilege multinationals at the expense of governments, consumers, the environment and small firms, as SP leader Emile Roemer and Euro-MP argue below.

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