Wednesday, 3 September 2014 - 13:12
MP warns of crucial year for Euro. Commission
VVD party leader Halbe Zilstra says that this coming year will be the year of truth. The new European Union will have to act. If they don't, the European project will be a thing of the past, Zilstra expects.
Yesterday Zilstra gave his vision for the coming parliamentary year in the Nieuwspoort press center in the Hague. The next year will be governed to a large extent by our relationship with other countries. We must not only ensure watertight boundaries, but are "at the foot of war" with radical Islam, he says.
SGP leader, Kees van der Staaij, also expects that the coming parliamentary year will be dominated by the foreignisation of domestic policy, due to the fact that all of the world's problems are suddenly much closer than previously thought. The world has caught up with us, Trouw.nl reports.
Now that the world is so unstable, we need to fear a massive flow of refugees towards northern Europe, according to Zijlstra. With that in mind, it is a worry that southern countries, like Spain and Italy, currently seem to do little to keep out refugees. Zijlstra called them "the soft underbelly of Europe" according to Trouw.nl.
This must change in the short term, the VVD leader threatens. It is not about tens of thousands of refugees, but hundreds of thousands, he continues, this will have a disruptive effect on our society. In that case the Netherlands will have to act themselves. Either Europe closes the borders, or we do, Zijlstra says.