ONE takes your message to the Dutch parliament
This week ONE and our friends at Cordaid handed in the Trillion Dollar Scandal petition to the Dutch parliament. Over 89,000 European ONE members signed the petition, asking European leaders to pass strong laws on transparency for oil, mining and logging companies.
Last October, the EU proposed legislation to oblige European extractive companies to publish the payments they make to governments where they operate. The Dutch government has stated its support for transparency measures, but it has not specified how strong these measures should be. However, the devil is in the detail of this kind of legislation, and there is huge pressure from the oil and mining industry to weaken the proposed law.
ONE and Cordaid handed the petition over during an official Dutch Parliament session, asking them to ensure the government supports strong measures when the Council of the EU, bringing together the 27 EU Member States, decides on this matter.
We met MPs from all the major political parties in the Netherlands including Mariko Peters (Green Party), Ewout Irrgang (Socialist Party), Jeroen de Lange (PvdA), Nebahat Albayrak (PvdA and chairperson of the Foreign Affairs Committee), Henk Jan Ormel (CDA), Kathleen Ferrier (CDA) and Ingrid De Caluwe (VVD).
The Netherlands is critical to ensuring European transparency legislation helps people hold their Governments to account. During our meeting with Dutch MPs we asked them to ensure that their Government stop the trillion dollar scandal allowing corrupt practices to be brushed under the carpet.
Presenting the petition in the Netherlands followed similar deliveries earlier this month in the UK, France and Denmark.
For the EU law to be adopted, the European Council has to decide together with the European Parliament and just today, in Brussels, the European Parliament discussed its draft position on the transparency measures. The MEPs are key to ensuring the legislation isn’t watered down, and they, too, need to hear from European citizens that fighting corruption in Africa is an issue we care about.
Please make your voice heard and sign our petition or write to your MEP asking him or her to do the right thing!
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About the Blog
The International ONE Blog is a daily log of the anti-poverty movement. The site is operated by ONE staff, with guest contributions from ONE volunteers, members and allies.
The content of each post and each comment represents the views of that author and does not necessarily reflect the views of ONE. ONE does not support or oppose any candidate for elected office, and any post expressing support or opposition for a candidate is not endorsed by ONE.
06/04/2012 at 3:12 pm
More transparency is needed in the oil, gas and mining industries to prevent the international scramble for Africa’s natural resources from fueling still deeper corruption and instability.complex corporate deals for accessing natural resources could be used corruptly to benefit vested interests in the countries with mineral resources.
“Many resource-rich countries in Africa have suffered deeply from corruption, conflict and unfair foreign exploitation, “Their citizens have a right to know how oil and mineral deals are being done, who is taking part in these deals and where the money is going.”
BY Aggrey M Rushere,Secretary PWYP Uganda Chapter and Executive Director,Abantu For Development Uganda (AFOD)
Recent years have seen a big increase in public disclosure of revenue payments to governments from the extractive industries. But that positive trend has been cast into doubt as international oil companies threaten legal action in the U.S to stop the Securities Exchange Commission implementing strong transparency rules. Oil companies are also lobbying to water down plans for similar rules in the European Union. Despite ‘big oil’ calling for a global ‘level playing field’, it appears to be fervently undermining efforts to create just that – a new global standard for transparency of revenue payments.