International

Is international pressure the last chance for a free Palestine?

EU heads of government will meet to discuss (amongst other things) defence cooperation. They will without doubt point to the need for increased defence efforts due to the unstable situation on Europe’s external borders. This week European Defence Agency (EDA) chief Jorge Domecq gave a more honest account in the European Parliament. The real reason for doing more on defence is to keep high-tech companies from leaving Europe. In short, the military-industrial complex is back, or rather it never went away.

By Eric Smaling - In these turbulent times it’s hard to decide which foreign news most preoccupies you. The refugee boats on the Mediterranean Sea, the caliphate of ISIS, the refugee camps in and around Syria, the earthquake in Nepal, Boko Haram, the ever more precarious situation in Yemen, the rapprochement between the US and Cuba, or Ukraine? And without the appalling fate of the MH-17 and its passengers, would Ukraine still stand so high on the list?

SP Senator Tiny Kox, accompanied by four other members of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE), travelled to Turkey to assess the lay of the land in the runup to the approaching elections. They have now completed their pre-election observation and produced a report.

European Commissioner Andrus Ansip today published his strategy for the Digital Internal Market, his major area of responsibility. SP Euro-MP Dennis de Jong was critical of the initiative. ‘It’s mainly major corporations which have been urging this, but the strategy is of less importance to the consumer and to smaller firms,’ he said, adding that ‘these are precisely the interests which in this matter it is my task to secure. We should not be reducing protection for the consumer and the small firm must not be saddled with all sorts of bureaucratic rules.’

Proposals for a new arbitration system in the free trade treaty with the United States are no more than a smokescreen, SP Euro-MP Anne-Marie Mineur said today during a meeting with European Commissioner for External Trade Cecilia Malmström. The Investor-State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) is the most controversial aspect of the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) and a possible stumbling block in the negotiations. Yet the revised version presented today by Malmström does nothing to address the fundamental objections.

The European Parliament this week voted by a large majority to approve a new strategy on alcohol. A proposal originally intended to improve information to consumers regarding the food value of alcoholic drinks has become a far-reaching health policy aimed at alcohol abuse. This is the umpteenth attempt by the European Union to grab more powers.

Two years on from the disaster at the textile factory in Rana Plaza, not all of the victims have been compensated for the suffering they have undergone. The measures which have been announced have not been fully implemented, and the SP wants to see the ‘naming and shaming’ of the guilty textile manufacturers, as well as the application and monitoring of the 2013 agreement on fire prevention and the safety of buildings.

After a year of pointless sanctions, Russia and the rest of Europe’s countries need to return to the negotiating table. This is the only way in which the tensions afflicting the continent can be eased and the chance of a greater crisis countered. So said SP Senator Tiny Kox this week in Moscow, during a visit in his role as chair of the United Left in the Council of Europe. Kox was in Russia’s capital for an international conference hosted by the social democratic party Just Russia.