Netherlands to join US-led air strikes in Syria - "not a very clever move of the Mark Rutte Government", say some

The Netherlands has agreed to join US-led air strikes in Syria extending its current mission over Iraq, Dutch officials announced today, bowing to a request from the United States.

"In order to make the fight against ISIS in Iraq more efficient, it has been decided to carry out air strikes against ISIS in eastern Syria," the foreign and defence ministries said in a statement.

Late last year in the wake of the November Paris attacks, the Dutch government received a request from allies the US and France to broaden its campaign of air support against the Islamic State (IS) jihadist group -- also known by the acronym ISIS.

The Netherlands is already participating in the coalition by carrying out air strikes in Iraq with four F-16 aircraft specialising in close air support of ground operations by Iraqi forces.

But it had insisted in the past that it would not extend the air strikes over Syria without a UN mandate.

"We are going to deploy the F-16s above Syria, in particular to stop the pipeline leading from Syria into Iraq," Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte told reporters

Note EU-Digest: Not a very clever move by the Dutch  Mark Rutte Government,  just when the peace talks are beginning and ISIS is looking around for another "soft target" in Europe. As one politician noted :"With just 4 F-16 jet fighters at our disposal, it is basically not a question of being tough or accommodating, but rather of being stupid". 

Read more: Netherlands to join US-led air strikes in Syria: official | Business Standard News

EU Presidency: The Netherlands: Dutch have a special responsibility meeting Global Goals - by Tamira Gunzburg

The Dutch Presidency of the EU-  01 through 06-2016

In 2015, the world made the biggest ever promise to itself. World leaders adopted the 17 Global Goals for Sustainable Development that will help us tackle problems like extreme poverty, hunger and climate change. The deadline they set themselves is the year 2030.

Now, as 2016 gets underway, the question can no longer be postponed. How will we go about implementing these goals, which apply to North and South alike? The only way to hit the ambitious deadline is to start full throttle.

To anyone who has had anything to do with the rotating presidency of the Council of the EU, the constraint of limited time and the need to hit the ground running will not be new. Least of all for those who just kicked off their 12th Presidency for the next six months.

But there is another reason why the Dutch would do well to waste no time in charting the path for the Global Goals. Their next Presidency will most probably be around 2030, when the final appraisal will be made on whether or not the world has managed to end extreme poverty and hunger, as our current leaders have set out to do.

In order to ensure that they, and all of us, can shine at that moment, here are a few priorities the Dutch Presidency can act upon right now.

Europe is facing the biggest refugee crisis since World War Two, due to protracted insecurity and destitution in Syria and across parts of Africa and Asia. The influx is projected to continue to rise into 2016. With the political distance between certain European Member States still wide, the Presidency will have to work hard to build a strong EU position that transcends domestic interests. The Dutch government has rightly identified migration and international security as one of the key priorities of their Presidency.

Refugees must be afforded protection and their needs and rights met as a matter of urgency. Yet, several Member States are yielding to the temptation to finance these costs by raiding their aid budgets. Others are even trying to pass off more security, military and intelligence operations as aid. And we are already seeing aid shift away from the poorest countries: in 2014, global aid to the least developed countries fell by 4.6% compared to 2013. That’s a decrease of €1.45 billion to those who need it most.

The Dutch Presidency will need to keep its eye on the prize and ensure that Member States protect refugees without diverting international aid. The EU has already shown that it is possible to do both: its 2016 budget increased funding for both the refugee crisis and development aid simultaneously. This is the kind of leadership the Dutch should take forward.

Of course, it is not all about aid. On average, overseas development aid is a small flow compared to developing countries’ domestic resources. However, these countries still lose at least $1 trillion every year through illicit financial flows, including tax evasion. Stopping this haemorrhage could unleash unprecedented funds for development and reduce pressure on donor countries’ squeezed budgets.

Transparency is key here. Shining a light on the payments between companies and governments and on companies’ tax practices would allow citizens in poor countries to follow the money and ensure their governments spend it responsibly. The EU has already passed ground-breaking legislation to oblige oil and mining companies to publish payments they have made to governments abroad, and transparency in this sector has led to increased social spending in a number of cases. Banks, too, have started reporting their taxes on a country-by-country basis.

The Netherlands was central to passing that legislation back in 2013, and now finds itself chairing the very institution that is scheduled to examine several proposals over the coming months that aim to do the same, but this time for other economic sectors. Obliging large multinationals to confidentially report their tax information per country is already happening. By pushing for the information to be made available to the public, the Presidency can ensure developing countries also benefit.

In a world where the Global Goals will not be met with aid alone, unlocking funds with this win-win legislation is precisely the kind of innovative manoeuvre the Dutch should lead on.

Read more: The Dutch have a special responsibility with the Global Goals | EurActiv

EU-US Partnership: "The EU is increasingly unreliable and unpredictable" - by George Friedman

European Unity?

The United States has a partnership with Europe, but it can no longer think of NATO as the mechanism by which it is related to Europe, George Friedman told EurActiv in an exclusive interview.

George Friedman the author of this report is an American political scientist and author. A former chief intelligence officer, he is the founder of Stratfor and was its financial overseer and CEO. He recently sold his shares in Stratfor and started Geopolitical Futures, a new global analysis company. 

Firstly, the US looks at Europe in the much broader context of Eurasia. So now we have a crisis that stretches from the Pacific to the Atlantic. The Chinese are in crisis, Russia is in crisis, the Middle East is in terrific crisis, and now Europe is in crisis as well. So we are looking at a situation where an area with a population of 5 billion is transforming in ways we cannot anticipate.

An American looks at this not just as Europe, but as a range of problems in general. There are many American views of Europe, but my view is that the EU has failed, but there is no clear alternative. And we see the failure in the immigration issue, which we do not regard as a major issue because it is less than 0.5% of population shift, but Europe cannot make a decision on how to handle it.

This is not an unmanageable problem. You can decide not to let anyone in, and then you take measures to prevent that, or you decide to integrate them and you do certain things to make that happen. It is Europe’s inability to make a decision that is, from the American point of view, the most problematic.

It is problematic because the United States has a partnership with Europe. As important as the EU, and very much missing from this conversation, is NATO: the stresses that exist between the countries in the European Union also become present in NATO.

So for example, we have one relationship with the French, one relationship with the British, a very different relationship with the Germans and a completely different relationship with the Poles. We can no longer think of NATO as the mechanism by which we are related to Europe.

This is not a catastrophic situation for the United States, but it poses challenges to us in the Middle East, and it poses challenges with Russia, and we are looking at the Europeans as increasingly unreliable and increasingly unpredictable.

Note EU-Digest: a most interesting and revealing report, exposing the weaknesses of the EU, including: lack of loyalty among partners, disarray among member states in the decision making process, need for a strong central leadership,  ineffectiveness of NATO, and need for our own EU army. As the saying goes :"We, the EU, better fish or cut bait". 

Hope you are taking note ? - EU Citizens, EU Presidency,  EU Commission, EU Parliament,  and foremost all you 28 self-centered EU member states governments. Don't destroy this fantastic project of democracy we call the EU, which has brought us more than 60 years of  Democracy, Peace and Prosperity. We the people will hold you responsible. We can't turn the clock back. Time for action is now !
 
For the complete report click here: George Friedman: The EU is increasingly unreliable and unpredictable | EurActiv

The Netherlands: Prime Minister Rutte to Visit Silicon Valley January 31 through February 2

Dutch PM Mark Rutte

Prime Minister Mark Rutte will travel to California January 31 through February 2 with Special Envoy for StartupDelta Neelie Kroes to meet major tech companies, startup entrepreneurs, and knowledge institutes in and around Silicon Valley.

The Netherlands and the US are front-runners of innovation. With its large tech companies, startups, and leading universities, Silicon Valley is the most innovative region in the world. Collaborating with companies and knowledge institutes in Silicon Valley creates great opportunities for the Netherlands.

Many companies in Silicon Valley have located a part of their European activities in the Netherlands. Also, an increasing number of Dutch companies are active in Silicon Valley. The Netherlands and California are already working closely together as they target climate change, agriculture, and the global promotion of clean and smart transportation.

For additional details on the trip contact: Ilse van Overveld, 202-274-2630, or Carla Bundy, 202-274-2632, in Washington, DC,

Almere-Digest

Dutch jihadists should die before returning to Netherlands says Dutch P.M Mark Rutte

NL Times writes that Prime Minister Mark Rutte thinks it is better if Dutch jihadists who traveled to join the fight in Syria and Iraq die there instead of returning to the Netherlands. He said this in the RTL election debate last night.

This statement met opposition from all the other party leaders involved in the debate, with the exception of Geert Wilders (PVV), who was absent due to illness.

Alexander Pechtold (D66) called Rutte’s (VVD) position “unworthy of a Prime Minister” and stated that Rutte was expressing the ideas of Wilders by endorsing the position. “I find that you really can not say: go die in the desert” Pechtold thinks that the Netherlands should bring returned jihadists to justice.

Note Almere Digest: "Come on Mr. Pechtold, stop playing the "goodie-goodie man' - you don't win elections that way. 

Specially not against Mark Rutte, who is fighting for his political life and Geert Wilders, who is willing to say or lie about anything to show he is a "true" nationalist who only has the interest of the people and his country at heart."

Almere-Digest

Dutch Government Crises: "SMOKESCREEN IS KEEPING RUTTE GOVERNMENT ON LIFE SUPPORT "

The pieces might have been stuck together, but the "adhesive" attempts of the Center-Right Rutte II  Government are taking more and more desperate forms.

To limit further loss of face lhe Government coalition is trying to find a way to sneak past the Upper Chamber (Senate) blockage of their revised health-care legislation. 

Opposition parties which have been collaborating with the government on major issues have indicated they will not support changes in the legislation.

Read more: Rookgordijn houdt kabinet-Rutte II overeind - AD.nl

For a translation of this Dutch language report click here, copy and paste in the link of the above webpage and fill in your language requirements 

Nederland in onstuimig weer: Als Nederland een bedrijf was zouden we al lang failliet zijn - door: Robert Jan Blom

Het gaat niet al te best met Nederland

Het is om kriegelig van te worden: we zitten nu op zo’n 750.000 werklozen oftewel  8,5 procent van de beroepsbevolking. Bekendebedrijven als Halfords en Mexx worden failliet verklaard, met vele werklozen tot gevolg.

De ene na de andere bank laat weten afscheid te nemen van nog eens enkele duizenden werknemers. KPN kondigt  alweer een afslankingsoperatie aan. En de politici? Zij houden stug vol dat de crisis voorbij is.

Waarom? Omdat u op achttien maart 2015 naar de stembus moet voor de provinciale statenverkiezingen.

Wie alert is, weet dat het pover gesteld is met de financiële gezondheid van ons land. Natuurlijk: een land kan niet echt failliet gaan.

Maar als je een koele cijferaar op onze statistieken zou loslaten, laten we zeggen een private equity aasgier die een vijandig bod op de bv Nederland overweegt, tot welke conclusie zou hij dan komen? Ten eerste zou hij vaststellen dat Nederland Inc. onder een torenhoge schuldenlast zucht. Ten tweede zou hij bijkans worden bedolven onder uit allerlei kasten tuimelende lijken.

Tot zijn verbazing zou hij concluderen dat Nederland overeind wordt gehouden door vrijwilligers die eigenlijk normaal betaald zouden moeten krijgen.

Klik hier voor volledig artikel: Als Nederland een bedrijf was zouden we al lang failliet zijn - FaillissementsDossier.nl

The Netherlands - while poor segments of Dutch population suffer Government still legally allowing 20,000 letter-box companies to circumvent taxation

The Netherlands harboring  more than 20.000 letter box companies

A White House factsheet in 2009 reported. "Nearly one-third of all foreign profits reported by US corporations in 2003 came from just three small, low-tax countries: Bermuda, the Netherlands, and Ireland."

Like the Queen in Shakespeare's 'Hamlet' who protested that 'The lady doth protest too much, methinks,' the Dutch government hypocritically objected to the Netherlands being dubbed "a tax haven" and the White House agreed and deleted the line. 

The Dutch tax haven, has now more than  20,000 letter-box companies and in recent years even Facebook joined U2, the popular Irish rock group, to circumvent the tax system.. 

The Netherlands also hosts thousands of foreign financial vehicles. Bloomberg reports that a bookkeeper’s home office in Amsterdam also doubles as the headquarters for a Yahoo! Inc. offshore unit. 

It is a scandal that deficit-strapped Holland is raising retirement ages and taxes on the working classes while the Netherlands’ Government of PM Rutte and coalition partner Samson despite their vows to change the law continue to allow their country to be a €10.2trillion conduit on the global tax-avoiding network. 

 

Bloomberg says that attracted by the Netherlands’ lenient conservative policies and and an extensive network of tax treaties, companies such as Yahoo, Google, Merck & Co and Dell have moved profits through the Netherlands

Using techniques with nicknames such as the “Dutch Sandwich,” multinational companies routed €10.2trillion in 2010 through 14,300 Dutch “special financial units,” according to the Dutch Central Bank. Such units often only exist on paper, as is allowed by Dutch  law.

Google, IBM and Italian oil and gas group ENI head the list of companies using letter-box companies to cut their Dutch tax bills to between 0 and 5%, the Volkskrant daily said in an article.

According to theDutch  Financieele Dagblad , French state companies are also among those using the Netherlands to cut their tax bills.

In the meantime the Dutch Governmen has been dancing around the subject.  

Frans Weekers, Dutch deputy finance minister, said the controversy over the letterbox companies had damaged the Netherlands’ investment climate. “Over the past 10 years the trend has been for the number of letterbox companies in the Netherlands to keep growing. I want to turn that trend around,” Weekers told The Financial Times. “I see the Netherlands being portrayed in a bad light. I don’t want to be portrayed in a bad light."

Recently the Dutch government said tax treaties with Zambia and 22 other poor countries will be revised to allow the incorporation of anti-abuse clauses where necessary, but has not said a word about the major players which have letter box companies registered in the Netherlands and are involved in these tax evading schemes 

The European Commission has now said it will attempt to close a loophole that allows companies to cut their tax bill, a top official said on Monday, but the EU executive will first need to persuade member countries to back the change.

The commission wants rules to prevent companies setting up “letter-box subsidiaries” in countries solely to qualify for a softer tax regime and cut their bill.

Algirdas Semeta, the EU’s taxation commissioner, wants to insert an anti-abuse clause by the end of next year, allowing authorities to target artificial “parent-subsidiary” schemes that flout the spirit of the tax code.

“When our rules are abused to avoid paying any tax at all, then we need to adjust them,” he said. “Today’s proposal will ensure that the spirit, as well as the letter, of our law is respected.”

Semeta declined to name countries or companies that exploited the loophole but said that billions of euros were at stake.

EU-Digest

The Netherlands: Unrest In The Labor Party (PVDA) About JSF Purchase And Other Issues Could Topple Rutte Government

The former Dutch Vice-PM, Finance Minister and (PVDA) Labor party leader Wouter Bos, who writes a bi-weekly column for the well know Dutch Volkskrant newspaper  recently expressed his dismay in this column about the present Dutch Government of Mark Rutte's turn to what he called a "classical liberal American and ultimately marginalizing participative society".

"Even The King was allowed to announce that the established Dutch welfare state was going to make place for this so-called "participation society", said Bos 

Bos noted: "If the participation society as expressed in the speech from the throne on "Prinsjesdag" is not only the view of the  PM Rutte, but also that of  the Coalition (which includes the PVDA labor party), than the labor party must have gone through an ideological revolution... please tell me that this is not the case".

Given the unrest in the labor party on several actions undertaken by the government, including the recent decision by Defence Minister Jeanine Hennis and the government to abruptly finalize the year-long discussions about the JSF by unilaterally choosing to purchase 37 JSFs for the air-force at more than 5 billion euro's, has created a swell of protest not only in PVDA  circles, but around the country.

This could lead to a situation, if the present Labor party (PVDA) parliamentary leader Diederik Samsom does not succeed in holding his parliamentary fraction together, whereby several Labor party members would cast their votes in parliament with the opposition against the proposed government budget, and toppling the Rutte government. 

EU-Digest

Dutch PM Rutte Says Netherlands in Difficult Times, Unemployment to Rise - by Fred Pals

The Netherlands is going through extraordinarily difficult economic times and unemployment will continue to rise for some time, Prime Minister Mark Rutte said.

Dutch PM Mark Rutte

“Radical changes will come to the Netherlands,” Rutte said in a lecture in Amsterdam yesterday. “We stand for fundamental choices, and we need to make the right ones.”

The government will unveil a plan to save 6 billion euros ($7.9 billion) in parliament on Sept. 17. That’s on top of a four-year, 16 billion-euro austerity package approved in November when Rutte took office.

The Dutch economy, in its third recession since the financial crisis started in 2008, shrank 0.2 percent in the second quarter.

Rutte’s government, which comprises his Liberal Party and the Labor Party, stands at an all-time low in the polls.

The coalition would only retain 32 of the 150 seats in parliament if elections were held now, a drop of 47 seats, according to a survey published by polling agency Peil.nl on Aug. 25. The Labor Party would have 12 seats, while Rutte’s Liberal Party would get 20 seats, according to the poll.

Read more: Rutte Says Netherlands in Difficult Times, Unemployment to Rise - Bloomberg

Netherlands: If Elections Were Held Today Coalition Government Would Suffer Smashing Defeat - Says Polster

According to Dutch pollster Maurice de Hond the Dutch government coalition parties VVD (Conservative) and PvdA (Labor) would, if elections were held today, together get only 34 seats, 21 for the VVD and 13 for the PvdA.  A loss of 45 seats compared to last years election

The PVV ( Party for Freedom) of anti-Islam and anti-immigration Geert Wilders, who as his opponents say is better know for his "one liner's" rather than his political realism would double it's membership base in the Dutch parliament from 15 to 30 seats and become the biggest party in the parliament.

Almere-Digest