Coffee shops licensed to sell marijuana in the southern Dutch city of Maastricht will begin fingerprinting customers and scanning their IDs this summer to help prove they‘re following rules governing such sales.
“This is not something that we are doing willingly, but with pain in our hearts,” Marc Josemans, chairman of the Union of Maastricht‘s […]

The European Commission on Wednesday put forward ideas to encourage organ donations and transplants, including plans for an EU-wide organ donor card and expanding the use of living donors.
A Eurobarometer survey shows that while 81 percent of European citizens support the use of organ donor cards, only 12 percent have one.
EU Health Comissioner Markos Kyprianou […]

The European Commission said Wednesday it was considering tightening food advertising and nutrition labelling rules if companies failed to improve consumer awareness about unhealthy foods.
In a new drive against obesity, EU Health Commissioner Markos Kyprianou said he wanted to “encourage” food companies to provide consumers with full information about the health risks associated with their […]

The port of Rotterdam has been officially recognised as halal at the World Islamic Economic Forum (WIEF). This means the door is open to trade with Islamic distributors.
Last year, the port announced it was to be a distribution centre for halal-certified imported products from Indonesia and Malaysia for the European market. A spokesman for Rotterdam […]

The Dutch channel behind a reality TV show in which an organ donor must choose one of three candidates to receive her kidney has promised to broadcast it Friday despite the ruckus it has caused.
Lawmakers in the Dutch parliament have called for ‘The Big Donorshow’ to be scrapped on ethical grounds, but the channel insists […]

The Dutch language exam that potential immigrants have to pass to be able to come and live in the Netherlands is to become more difficult. Currently, people pass who do not actually qualify, according to Integration Minister Ella Vogelaar.
Since the introduction of the law on 15 March 2006, people from most non-EU countries have had […]

The Dutch trades union federation chair Agnes Jongerius is calling for positive discrimination in favour of people from immigrant backgrounds applying for jobs. In a newspaper interview, she said an immigrant candidate who was just as qualified for a job as Dutch-background candidates should get the post. Such positive discrimination would reduce unemployment in the […]

Two Royal Marechaussee officers on motorcycle arrested a motorcycle rider who was under the influence of alcohol and driving 220 km/hr on the A2 near Maastricht on Monday, the police reported on Tuesday.
The 30-year-old man from Liege was passing cars on the right and a breathalyser test showed he had twice the permitted level of […]

Another court has failed to ban motorcycle club the Hell’s Angels. The court in Maastricht found that the Limburg chapter of the club, the Nomads, could not be branded a criminal organisation.
The court has followed suit from courts in Amsterdam and Leeuwarden. The public prosecution department is appealing those cases.
It is unclear if the public […]

Forum Maastricht 2007: Critical, yet optimistic
What remains after the conference is a feeling of, albeit careful, optimism. Once its growing pains subside, Europe can become the political power that offers its citizens protection and stability. On the stage of global politics, Europe can also help to balance out the powers and make a change in […]

A European Commission spokesman yesterday criticised a planned television reality show in which a terminally ill woman decides to whom to donate a kidney as being in “rather bad taste.”
“It seems in rather bad taste to do a reality TV show on something like this, which is after all a very serious issue,” said […]

From today’s Radio Netherlands press review:
On its front page, today’s AD reports how in Limburg, 62,000 rock fans braved “the rain, mud and cold” to attend this year’s Pinkpop rock festival. Veteran punk rocker Iggy Pop confirms his reputation as one of the most striking figures on the music scene, as both the AD and […]

US and Dutch soldiers who died in Afghanistan were included for the first time in Sunday’s annual commemoration at the Netherlands American Cemetery and Memorial in the Dutch town of Margraten. The cemetery is the final resting place for 8,302 US soldiers who were killed during World War II. US Ambassador Ronald E Arnall praised […]

The Safety Board announced on Thursday that it is investigating the cause of the school bus accident in Jabeek on Wednesday in which 13 children were injured.
The board is investigating to what extent the road and intersection where the accident occurred are unsafe, whether the road network manager knew about this, and if so what […]

Half of public education in the Netherlands has become independent in the last ten years. In the period 2003–2006 in particular, many state schools installed an independent board of governors. The most common legal form they choose is the foundation.
School independence possible since 1996
There are two types of schools in the Netherlands: private […]

The government on Friday signed a definitive accord with the Association of Netherlands Municipalities (VNG) under which an amnesty will be given to thousands of illegal immigrants. One of the conditions is that municipalities must no longer provide relief for illegal immigrants who do not come under the scheme, but this agreement seems as soft […]

Dutch broadcaster BNN plans to air a television show next week where a terminally ill woman will decide who out of three young patients will get her kidney, Dutch media said on Saturday.
Viewers will be able to advise the 37-year-old woman, known as Lisa, via SMS which of the candidates to pick, the Algemeen Dagblad […]

Three-quarters of all train travellers in the Netherlands are curious about the person sitting next to them on the train. More than 60 percent even say they would like to strike up a conversation sometime but find it awkward to do so.
Research bureau Motivaction found this in a random survey of more than 500 people. […]

Having found wives for Dutch farmers in one reality tv show, RTL5 now wants to find wives for Alaskan lumberjacks in a follow-up programme. Tv production company Endemol, also responsible for Big Brother, is looking for women willing to be flown to Alaska for ‘romantic trips and games’, according to a spokesperson.
Source: Dutch News, 23 […]

Culture minister Ronald Plasterk plans to make the country’s 19 national museums free on Wednesday afternoons, newspaper Trouw reports on Friday.
The paper says the plan is set to cost €1m, not €4m as earlier thought.
The museums, including Amsterdam’s Rijksmuseum and the Open Air museum in Arnhem, store and exhibit the national art and culture […]

In an interview with the Volkskrant, chairman Paul Rosenmoller of a government-sponsored committee on fighting obesity says the government is not doing enough. Mr Rosenmoller, the former GreenLeft party leader, says The Hague is paying lip service to the fight against obesity, but mainly does nothing. He said that the food industry has taken the […]

Google Wednesday launched a test version of a translation tool that enables people to search the Internet in any of a dozen languages and have the results converted into their chosen tongue. A beta version of Google’s ‘cross-language information retrieval’ feature is online at http://translate.google.com/translate_s.
The service ‘in effect, will make the Web universal,’ Google […]

Airline company KLM has moved ahead of electronics group Philips as the Dutch company with the best reputation. Last year, it was the other way round, Rotterdam’s Erasmus University reports.
In the list of Dutch companies whose reputation has been surveyed this year for the sixth time, the top and second slots have been reversed this […]

The Netherlands must accept a verdict by the European Court of Human Rights which ruled in January that an insufficiently serious personal situation is no ground for deportation of asylum-seekers from the Netherlands if their country situation in general is unsafe.
A Somali who applied for asylum in May 2003 was rejected by then Aliens Affairs […]

Social Affairs State Secretary Ahmed Aboutaleb wants to give municipalities more autonomy in providing supplementary income support for the unemployed. They should also receive support in kind more often.
A number of local councils already provide free fridges, computers, TVs or subscriptions to sports clubs for people who cannot or will not work. Aboutaleb considers it […]

Jeremy Rifkin speaks at the Schuman lecture on 9 May 2007 in Maastricht.
Recorded by Bernd Kapeller, European Journalism Centre

Related article:
Forum Maastricht 2007: “If I call up Europe, who answers the phone?”

Young people who have not yet earned a diploma will be required to attend school until the age of 18, starting next school year. The cabinet hopes that extending the school attendance requirement by two years will help reduce the number of drop outs. Broad support for the measure emerged in the Senate on Tuesday.
Currently […]

Dutch Justice Minister Ernst Hirsch Ballin will set up a committee to research the options for simplifying the rules by which lesbian couples can become joint parents of a child born within their relationship.
Under current legislation, the female partner of the mother can only become a parent of the child through adoption. The Minister emphasizes […]

The Equal Treatment Commission (CGB) has ruled that a Christian school may not require Muslim pupils to shake the teacher’s hand. Pupils can however be required to attend school camp, newspaper Nederlands Dagblad reports.
De Rank primary school in Schoonhoven wanted to specify in its code of behaviour that pupils and their parents were required to […]

According to a report by the weekly job-seekers magazine Intermediaire, the latest generation of highly educated young people with a foreign background is doing well on the job market.
Although at the beginning of their careers, they earn less and often work below their level and it usually takes them longer to find a job. […]