Lost in administration and the big human rights quiz

A hectic day. It started at the office where I together with the administrator worked on finances. I learned two lessons in the past years about bookkeeping. 1: always make the administrator your best friend, becuase you can't do without them. 2: every administrator has a completely own way of working and want to administer everything in a completely different way.
The Netherlands doesn't have a lunch-culture, mostly we eat a sandwich behind our desk. But I went for a quick lunch with Juul (great bagels!) and we talked about her experiences with the OSCE - an organisation that still is rather exclusive to certain discrimination grounds. Interesting input and I will discuss this further tomorrow with another civil society representative.

In the afternoon I visited the farewell reception of the Dutch Human Rights embassador. For his farewell the quiz 1 against 100 was organised, I didn't bring it far as I didn't know whether 4 or 10 country rapporteurs had been appointed in the UN council since June 19th.... (10 is the right answer!). An interesting ocassion to learn more about the UN work on Human Rights and the importance of Special Procedures, and of course about the work of our embassador.

A European Treaty and the Teletubbies

During the negotations last weekend on the EU-treaty some countries managed to drop issues out of their own EU shopping trolley. The Fundamental Right Charter, which for cosmetic reason was already thrown out of the Treaty and only referred to, became subject to undressing by member states. Despite Tony Blair was probably already busy with the preparations of his visit to the Pope right after the gathering, he still managed to position UK laws on Union rights being binding before EU legislation in this field, in the UK.

Poland then realised that exceptions can also be created for areas that are important for them. They proposed something that informally was called the Teletubby-proposal; it wanted binding legislation saying that the Fundamental Rights Charter could not affect the right of member states to legislate in the sphere of public morality and family law, as well as the protection of human dignity and respect for human physical and moral integrity. For some strange reason other member states cynically rejected this idea, hence it became a unilateral declaration, which happily will have little legal power.

Happy Sunday

Boris van der Ham (Member of the Democrat Party of the Dutch Parliament -D66) was honoured 'EuroNetherlander' of the year last Sunday, I was honoured young Dutch European citizen of the year. The elections were a nice initiative to promote Europe in a positive way. Besides that I'm of course happy that this election is a recognition of the need for LGBT youth issues to be on the centre of the European agenda - and for this sake I will also use the title.

I am very grateful to Rogier Elshout - the EU representative of the Dutch Youth council, who not only nominated me, but also lobbied for me, despite he was nominated himself. His work bring Europe to the core of the lives of Young Dutch Citizens should also be honoured!
Photo: www.pitchit.nl

EUrophobia or EUrogloria

EU leaders are currently still strugling in Brussels to find the way forward for the European Union. Some say: we shouldn't have a flag or an anthem; the Fundamental Rights charter shouldn't be legally binding; we shouldn't have a new (democratic) voting system; we shouldn't have one Foreign Minister.

The Netherlands doesn't want that the document will be called 'constitution', there shouldn't be a flag or anthem and there shouldn't be a reference to the primacy of EU law. This makes our demands purely cosmetic. Just because political leaders haven't been able to convey the need of a strong EU a few years ago, they now bring a deceptive message to their own constituency.

I believe that a strong EU is needed not only to safeguard economic growth, moreover to guarantee a healthy, wealthy and prosperous society with a equal place for each citizen and with respect to the world that we live in. It is needed to work on such endeauvours together, not in the last place because single member states' capacity to have a healthy and competitive place in the world economy lack any potential for success. We need to build together, and building together requires a clear common understanding of values. Albeit social, cultural or economic values, albeit human rights values or foreign policy values. A legal framework in which such values can be established is therefore essential. Creating common values is not established at EU-top, it is a journey that shall continue as long as our Union will exist.

Today I was elected Young Dutch European Citizen of the Year, and I'm very proud of that. Working with young people in Europe inspires me because young people have such tremendous energy in trying to understand each other, in building on the common project of the European Union.

Hate crime

I Amsterdam?

Tonight I learned that Amsterdam is the biggest internet hub in the world, holds the 9th place on the list of cities with biggest airports in the world, is the fastest growing city where cruise-ships board new passengers, but has the lowest possible ambition when it comes to developing itself into a metropole. That's at least what the deputy-director of the city council's town planning office thinks. And now he is trying to move politicans in more visionary metropole development policies.

It is true that the current development plans do not meet the needs for fast-growing economy, nor that there's a good enough vision in general in the Netherlands to challenge the fast growing economies in the world that soon will become competitors for our service-based, mainport-based and distribution oriented country. Such vision also lacks at the European level. We want to be the most knowledgeable and competetive economy in the world, at least that's what they say. I also want it, but I miss sufficient tools to realise this.

Our Dutch Cabinet is foremost concerned with the lack of support to EU, and instead of promoting it it tries to negotiate a weaker EU, with less competence to be competetive, and with less competence to promote human rights. When our little country would look into the mirror it would soon see that this country is too little to carry responsibilities that we are nowadays facing all alone. But mirrors can be frightening.

Back to Amsterdam. It is so nice to see politics at a local level every now and then, maybe becuase things get concrete much easier. It concerns the environment which you see every day. I hope that the city council is a bit more visionary and tries to take up some leadership. The plans I heard tonight are good for the city's development as well for the environment in general (though I didn't like the idea of having an enourmous amount of ferries bringing people accross the city - all development needs to be sustainable!).

No time to waste

Sometimes I feel like being a weak compromise between being ultimate lazy, and being super-active. After I came back from Central-Asia I planned my agenda full enough not to be able to recover from a small jetlag (which I thought I wouldn't have). Consequense was that I have been a bit grumpy during the last week whilst being in Brussel and London. This morning I slept until PM - and now I feel ready to face the business this week again.

My business is caused by a feeling of 'no time to waste', the feeling that I need to get everything possible out of life, not tomorrow but now. At the same time I'm actually a very lazy person. Anyhow, consequence is that time flies. Via facebook I met an old friend from Australia, she send this picture which was made seven years ago in London (Kees, Julie and Danielle are on it). I just love facebook!