Pressure increases on Dutch PM to condemn website

INTERNATIONAL PRESSURE on the Dutch prime minister, Mark Rutte, to repudiate an anti-immigration website has increased following cross-party condemnation in the European Parliament.

The vice-president of the European Commission, Viviane Reding, said the website inviting Dutch people to complain about eastern European immigrants was “against everything” that the EU stood for.

She said freedom of movement was a given for EU citizens and that they should feel at home wherever they resided. “The European Union is founded on the values of democracy, non-discrimination and the rule of law which must be respected by all including national politicians,” she told MEPs.

She urged the Dutch authorities to close the website down on the basis that it was discriminatory.

Mr Rutte has so far declined to condemn the website because it is run by the far-right Freedom Party, the PVV, led by maverick politician Geert Wilders. The PVV has 25 seats in the 150-seat Dutch parliament, and Mr Rutte’s minority two-party coalition is dependent on its support to get legislation through the house.

Mr Rutte’s failure to distance himself from the website is the subject of a motion which is expected to receive the support of all the major groupings in the European Parliament today.

The chairman of the largest group in the parliament, Joseph Daul of the European People’s Party, said previous generations had fought and died for the liberation of Europe.

He could not understand how the Dutch government could stay silent about such a website and cited the Irish philosopher Edmund Burke’s remarks about evil flourishing when good people do nothing.

Socialist leader Hannes Swoboda said it was time for Mr Rutte to take a clear stance on the website and distance himself from it.

Guy Verhofstadt, president of the centre-right grouping ALDE, said he had “nothing but contempt” for Mr Wilders’s initiative.

He likened Mr Rutte’s failure to condemn the website to remarks by French president Nicholas Sarkozy, who said at the weekend that there were too many immigrants in France and that he would re-examine the Schengen agreement.

Mr Verhofstadt described Mr Sarkozy’s behaviour as unworthy of his office and akin to the behaviour of the National Front in France.

Dutch MEP Peter van Dalen said Mr Wilders did not deserve the time or the attention of the European Parliament and the real focus should be on Mr Rutte’s failure to condemn the site.