From : Focus Information Agency
Geert Wilders, the Dutch leader of the xenophobic Freedom Party has announced his intention to stand for the European Parliament in the upcoming June elections.
He and his Freedom Party (Partij Voor de Vrijheid, or PVV) are to mount the EU hustings under the slogan “For the Netherlands.”
“You may not have noticed, but the campaign for the European parliamentary elections has begun. And you will not believe it, but it can even get exciting,” he said making the announcement on Monday (13 February).
Mr Wilders said the party would fight to reverse the accession of Bulgaria and Romania, calling the two countries “corrupt nations.”
The PVV also wants to head to Strasbourg to prevent Turkey from joining the bloc.
Turkey must not become a member “not now, not in a hundred years, not in a thousand years, entirely never,” the anti-Islam Mr Wilders said in a statement.
The party, arguing there must be “less Europe and more Netherlands” will also campaign to shrink the scope of EU governance to a minimum, restricting itself to nothing beyond economic co-operation – the European Union’s “original task.”
“Those billions must be given to Dutch citizens instead of the farmers in Poland, France and Portugal that we subsidise,” said the hard-right politician, formerly of the pro-free-market centre-right People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy (Volkspartij voor Vrijheid en Democratie, or VVD).
Mr Wilders also wants to see national parliaments given a veto over European legislation.
Co-operation with other hard-right and anti-immigrant parties such as the Danish People’s Party or the Flemish separatist Vlaams Belang (Flemish Interest), which currently tops the polls in Flanders, is expected but Mr Wilders has ruled out working with outright fascist parties such as France’s Front National or the British National Party.
Last week, he provoked a diplomatic row between the UK and the Netherlands,when the British Home Office refused him entry to the country due to his extreme views.
Mr Wilders had been invited to London to a House of Lords screening of his film Fitna, which has been widely denounced as Islamophobic, by Lord Pearson of the UK Independence Party.
Maxime Verhagen, the Dutch foreign minister, subsequently telephoned his counterpart, David Miliband to protest the decision.
On Thursday (19 February), Geert Wilders announced he will appeal against the British government’s decision not to allow him in.
In the Dutch parliament Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende and foreign minister Maxime Verhagen said that while they opposed Mr Miliband’s decision, they would not pursue the issue any further.
My personal comment:
Dear Romanians, dear Bulgarians, Turcs and Europeans: in the Netherlands not everybody does share his opinion, I am one of them!!! Whatever Wilders says, I am not agree with the basic principle of his party and that is hate against whatever is foreign. I am the oppiste, I love everything what is foreign, I want to discover, to know, to understand and learn from it.
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