European elections - D66 - Ja

European elections - D66 - Ja, originally uploaded by CharlesFred.

There is a site at www.kiescompas.nl which helps voters decide which parties most closely represent their political views. It is a popular application which has been sold to many other countries. It asks you your opinion of various issues (about 26) and then asks you to rank them in order of the importance which you attach to each issue.

I came out with D66 being the closest (which I had known would be the case before I did it), then GreenLeft, then the Party for the Animals.

My main issues were the following:

1 the protection of the privacy individual from the intrusion from The State
2 encouraging Turkey (and the Balkan countries) to reform their systems so that they can also join the EU - ie. NOT taking teh Sarkozy/Merkel approach
3 maintain and defend same sex marriage, legal euthanesia and the decriminlaisation of soft drugs
4 maintain freedom of speech with no extra protection for religions
5 invest in green technologies, even if it means extra costs and taxes now

D66 and GreenLeft are the only parties to whole-heartedly embrace the European ideal. It is very easy to be critical, more difficult to maintain a vision.