Advertise On EU-Digest

Annual Advertising Rates

2/9/06

Bloomberg.com: Spreek Nederlands, Dutch Minister Asks as Migrant Strains Rise

Bloomberg.com

Spreek Nederlands, Dutch Minister Asks as Migrant Strains Rise

The Netherlands, home to multinational companies such as Unilever and Royal Dutch Shell Plc, may ask residents not to use foreign languages in public. Rotterdam, the country's second-biggest city, last month passed a code that encourages residents to speak only Dutch in schools, at work and on the street as the city struggles to assimilate Turkish and Moroccan immigrants. Now Immigration Minister Rita Verdonk is calling for a similar national measure. Neither move includes penalties for violators. ``I'm for such a code for all Dutch people,'' Verdonk said in a Jan. 31 column in the Amsterdam-based newspaper Trouw. ``In such a code, you tell people what's expected of them and hope that they will live by it.''

No comments: