Schism between Christian parties in European parliament

The establishment of a new conservative group in the European parliament on Monday has caused a schism between two small Dutch Christian parties. The one-man SGP refuses to drop its policy that women cannot hold political posts.

The new MEPs have not been sworn in yet, but the first split has already occurred. The fundamentalist SGP (Reformed Political Party) and the orthodox ChristenUnie (Christian Union) are the two small protestant parties in Dutch parliament that, for the past 25 years, have teamed up in Brussels. For the recent European parliamentary elections they formed a joint list of candidates and won two seats.

But when the British Conservative Party announced the formation of a new political group in the European parliament on Monday, only the ChristenUnie's Peter van Dalen appeared on the list of MEPs. Bas Belder of the SGP was excluded from the European Conservatives and Reformists Group because he refuses to let go of the party's policy that women are unfit for political responsibility.

According to the SGP's beliefs, the bible says men and women have seperate roles and therefore women can not be full party members or elected representatives. Both orthodox parties draw their support from the Dutch "bible belt" - which stretches from the tip of Zeeland in the southwest to northern parts of the province Overijssel - and have long been affiliated with each other.

But when the ChristenUnie, the more left-leaning of the two, doubled its seats to six in the last general elections in the Netherlands, it was asked to join a governing coalition of Christian democrats and Labour in 2007. The compromise nature of a coalition government forced the party to shelve some of its ideas about prostitution, euthanasia and abortion. That has angered the SGP, which still holds two seats in the 150-member Dutch parliament.

In Europe, however, the two still worked together and the fact that the SGP doesn't allow women in its ranks was apparently not a problem for the European Independence/Democracy Group they were a part of. But both parties wanted out of that fraction and an opportunity presented itself when a new initiative of conservatives started taking shape.

However, the British Conservative Party, one of the major players in the new group, found the SGP's principles unacceptable and demanded it change its policy on female members. When the SGP declined to make concessions - saying "the SGP chooses its own ideas, nobody else" - the CU left its old partner behind and signed up alone with the new European Conservatives and Reformists group. "In fact the ChristenUnie has ditched the SGP," according to the SGP's statement.

The new conservative block will bring together at least 56 MEPs and will probably be the fourth largest party in the parliament. Its 'anti-federalist' members come from eight countries: the Czech Republic, Finland, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Belgium, Poland, the Netherlands and the UK.