ARLA/CLUSTER: Cinco petições contra o fim da Radio Netherlands Worldwide

Terça-Feira, 14 de Junho de 2011 - 10:29:04 WEST

Five petitions in support of RNW

No fewer than five petitions against the upcoming budget cuts for
Radio Netherlands Worldwide are currently doing the rounds. This was
announced today by Iede de Vries of the action committee.

Employees of RNW’s Dutch service launched a petition several weeks ago
against the management’s plan to drastically reduce the station’s
Dutch activities in order to save 10 million euros a year. Last week a
multilingual website was launched to get support from listeners and
web users in other languages.

Today it became known that three more petitions have been launched. Mr
De Vries said that one is an initiative of former ambassadors of the
Netherlands, while another has been launched by Dutch companies
operating internationally. Both groups emphasize that RNW is important
for the image of the Netherlands abroad.

The Dutch Association of Journalists (NVJ) has also launched a
petition among international news organizations. This stresses in
particular the role that RNW plays in promoting press freedom in the
world.

The action committee is collecting the responses to the various
petitions, and will hand these to the Lower House just before a vote
on the cuts that is scheduled for 27 June.

The Cabinet’s proposed cuts to RNW’s budget are expected to be
announced some time this week. Reports last week suggested that the
coalition has not yet been able to agree the amount.