Luxurious vacation villa rentals in St Maarten, St Martin and St Barth
has announced that it will again offer flights between St Barth and St Maarten starting on July 15 in partnership with Tropical Airlines. (aka Air Antilles Express)
Air Antilles Express is an airline based in Guadeloupe. It is a regional airline operating scheduled services between the islands of the French West Indies and to St Lucia. Its services are operated by Air Guyane using 2 ATR 42 aircraft under the name of Air Antilles.
THE NETHERLANDS - Following a meeting of the Island Council, the former Dutch colony of St Maarten has agreed to the creation of a supervisory board to regulate the island’s finances.
Curaçao, another Caribbean island and former Dutch colony, has already agreed to the same measure.
The government in The Hague is involved in a restructuring of the constitutional status of the Netherlands Antilles but was only prepared to grant greater autonomy to Curaçao and St Maarten if there were improvements in law enforcement and in their finances.
The creation of a financial supervisory board to scrutinise the islands’ budgets satisfies the second condition as far as the Netherlands is concerned.
The board will be located in Curaçao and will be chaired by Hans Weitenberg, the former director of Statistics Netherlands.
In Curaçao there was fierce opposition to financial supervision, which many people regard as a form of re-colonisation. There were loud protests in the capital Willemstad and the Island Council initially rejected the idea. It was only when a new Island Council took office in 2007 that the agreement was ratified.
Things were quieter in St Maarten, where there was no public protest and the Island Council took less than an hour to make its decision.
The introduction of financial supervision will be discussed by the State Ministerial Council (the Dutch council of ministers and the minister plenipotentiary of the Netherlands Antilles and Aruba) on Friday.
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