THE HAGUE, 28/10/03 - Labour (PvdA) party big wheel Jacques Wallage is worried about the way in which more and more Dutch people are speaking about foreigners. Remarks like "full is full" are becoming widely accepted, he believes.

"In recent years, things have been said in Dutch politics which are injurious for very many people," Wallage told the Lower House commission investigating integration policy over the past 30 years yesterday. The former state secretary and PvdA parliamentary party leader stated that expressions like "full is full" - expressing the opinion that there are too many residents in the Netherlands - are nowadays considered normal. These statements express right-wing extremism, according to Wallage.

Wallage was invited by the commission because he carried out a hot debate on integration of minorities at the beginning of the 1990s with the then conservative (VVD) leader Frits Bolkestein, who tried to break the taboo on the subject during this period. Wallage, currently Mayor of Groningen, said the present EU Commissioner Bolkestein partly made his tough statements on asylum-seekers among other things from electoral considerations, though he also said he never doubted Bolkestein's integrity.