Dutch far-right opens new, anti-EU website
By Philip Ebels
In a replay of events earlier this year when it launched an anti-immigrant website, the Dutch far-right Party for Freedom (PVV) has set up a new protest portal - this time against the EU.
The website decries the high pay of EU officials and MEPs and asks visitors to click on a button if they agree.
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"Eurocrats fill their pockets in a scandalous way," it says.
It also promises to present its findings to EU Council President Herman van Rompuy before a meeting of EU leaders in October.
Its chief, Geert Wilders, on Friday (3 August) tweeted that the site gor over 10,000 clicks in the first few hours after it came online.
Wilders already attracted attention in Brussels when, in February, he launched a website asking visitors to report problems caused by eastern European immigrants.
The European Parliament at the time adopted a resolution denouncing the initiative.
The new website - the third of its kind, after a second one against unruly immigrant youths, or "street terrorists" - comes amid falling support for the PVV a little over a month before elections in the Netherlands.
The party looks set to lose up to a quarter of its 24 seats (in a chamber of 150).
Traditionally anti-Islam, its new anti-EU pitch calls for the Netherlands to quit the EU - a hardening of its earlier eurosceptic line, which called for Brussels to limit itself to a mere economic union.
The launch of the new site can be seen as the start of Dutch electioneering, with campaigns expected to center around the eurozone crisis.
Elections were called after Wilders walked out of talks on EU-demanded budget cuts with the minority government, which he had helped to keep afloat.
"The elections will be about one thing only. The EU: who still believes it?" Wilders tells the viewer in a new video.
Other parties are also expected to capitalise on the rising anti-EU sentiment in the country.
The ruling liberal VVD, led by Prime Minister Mark Rutte, and the far-left Socialist Party are neck-and-neck in the polls.
Both are traditionally eurosceptic.