International

From 11th to 14th June the 63rd Bilderberg Conference is to be held in Innsbruck in Austria. This private gathering is attended by the world’s most influential people: heads of government, bankers, industrialists, top scientists and researchers, and editors-in-chief of authoritative media outlets. Prime Minister Mark Rutte and Finance Minister Jeroen Dijsselbloem are amongst those taking part. It is totally wrong that this meeting receives no attention from the media.

Scarcely a day before the scheduled debate on the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) between the European Union and the United States, European Parliament president Martin Schulz has removed both the debate and the planned vote to establish the Parliament’s opinion from the agenda of the plenary, sending the report back to the Committee on International Trade, a move agreed by committee chair Bernd Lange. Schulz cited the large number of proposed amendments as the reason for his decision, but the SP’s European Parliament team have their doubts.

8 June 2015 At today’s press conference in Ankara, the international observers’ team from the Council of Europe and the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) presented its initial findings regarding Sunday’s parliamentary elections.

In the absence of a political solution, the military mission in Iraq is doomed to fail, according to SP Member of Parliament Jasper van Dijk in response to what he observed on his two-day visit to the Dutch armed forces in Iraq and Jordan. ‘The Netherlands’ efforts offer no solution to the enormous problems in Iraq,’ he insists. ‘This must first and foremost address the structural exclusion of Sunnis from political power. As long as Sunnis don’t have the full influence they should enjoy, military deployment is pointless. Furthermore, the western military presence increases the chances of renewed violence against Europe and the United States.’

Provisional results of the Turkish parliamentary elections indicate that left Kurdish party HDP has succeeded in exceeding the 10% minimum threshold for representation.

The Turkish Parliamentary elections held today have been overshadowed by the large number of violent attacks that have occurred in the country. On Friday four people were killed and over a hundred wounded in a bloody bomb attack on a mass meeting of the left Kurdish party HDP. HDP has been the main target of attacks, but is by no means the only group which has had to cope with a wave of violence over the last few weeks. SP Senator Tiny Kox, who heads an international team of election observers sent to Turkey by the Council of Europe, told Turkish media that the upsurge of violence represents a threat to free and fair elections. Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu made a similar declaration, while HDP Chair Selahattin Demirtaş called on supporters to keep calm. Who is behind the violence remains unclear, while parties continue to accuse each other.

‘The Turkish parliamentary elections on 7th June promise to be exceptionally tense and exciting. The ruling AK Party is attempting to win a two-thirds majority, while the left Kurdish party is doing its best to get above the extremely high electoral threshold of 10% and social democrats and nationalists are shouting about how they’re going to put an end to the dominance of the governing party, whose founder Recep Tayyip Erdoğan is now Turkey’s President.’ So says SP Senator Tiny Kox, who heads an international team of observers from the Council of Europe. Days after the election he will be in Ankara to present the observation’s findings.

The SP’s new agenda for development cooperation will appear shortly. Five subjects will occupy centre-stage in this statement: emergencies, health care, youth, money and ‘green’ - the environment. SP Member of Parliament Eric Smaling and SP official Ben van Gils lay out the new agenda step by step.

Today the European Parliament External Trade Committee voted on sections of the trade and investment treaty currently being negotiated between the EU and the United States. Despite massive social resistance to the establishment of the Investor-State Dispute Settlement system (ISDS), the Trade Committee voted in principle to support the ISDS. The fact that the social democrats voted to back the controversial system was in particular a painful aspect for the SP. In two weeks’ time the resolution will be voted on by the entire Parliament.