Complaints over ‘deplorable’ website

Published on Wednesday 15 February 2012 02:43

Ambassadors from ten EU countries have asked the Netherlands to repudiate a nationalist party’s website that urges people to lodge complaints about central and eastern Europeans.

The site, launched last week by Geert Wilders’s Freedom Party, which backs the minority government, calls on citizens to report “central and east Europeans … for general nuisance, pollution and labour market displacement”.

An open letter signed by diplomats from Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia yesterday asked the Dutch to “distance themselves from this deplorable initiative”.

The open letter said: “The statistics clearly show that our fellow citizens contribute significantly to the growth of the Dutch economy.”

EU justice commissioner Viviane Reding and EU digital affairs commissioner Neelie Kroes, who is Dutch, have criticised the site.

Mr Wilders’s party is the third largest in the Netherlands and agreed to back the minority right-wing coalition government in return for concessions such as a crackdown on immigration.