Research
Articles
The View from the Capitals: Why the Netherlands said "no"
The answer is less complicated than it might seem. For the Dutch have always resisted moves towards a stronger political union, particularly in the areas of foreign policy and defence. In a country with huge international commercial interests, "Europe" has essentially meant economic integration, based upon strong Community institutions and a firm Community legal order. The Dutch preference for "supranational" arrangements is restricted to the internal market and closely related fields like monetary affairs or the environment. In most other areas, including defence, foreign policy, judicial matters and police cooperation, intergovernmentalism is our preferred way of doing business in Europe.
In recent years, pragmatism has gradually gained the upper hand, even at the cost of the community method. A predominant role for the European Council in setting the priorities for the Union is now widely accepted, as is the need for flexibility and closer cooperation among a limited number of countries. The Dutch are also increasingly in favour of using informal cooperation techniques, such as "benchmarking", "open coordination", and "peer pressure" in such economic areas as the Lisbon process. In addition to the proper Community channels, The Hague is rapidly building up networks of bilateral cooperation with most of the other member states. Finally, the "national interest" is nowadays openly invoked whenever deemed necessary. This is particularly the case when it comes to the budget of the European Union, where the Dutch are in per capita terms the biggest net-contributors. Although the Dutch government considers enlargement an essential precondition for the stability and the prosperity of the continent, during the various rounds of treaty reforms it has tried very hard, as the largest of the smaller member states, to defend its institutional 'rights' in a much wider Union. At the same time, any 'federalist' reference, still fatefully promoted in the Maastricht treaty, was quietly relegated to the background.
Official reaction in Holland to the constitutional project was very cool. Cabinet ministers called discussions about the final political structure of the Union "unrealistic" and "absurd". In their view, a wide-ranging debate about the future of the Union should not focus on "abstract concepts and remote vistas", but on "bread-and-butter issues" such as food safety, livelihoods, and security in the streets. Instead of a federal blueprint or a complete catalogue of competences, the Dutch prefer progress along charted routes, what we like to call an "evolutionary approach".
From that viewpoint the nation state remains the primary framework and reference-point for the organization of political life, including the democratic perspective. The government has made it very clear that the member states should "remain the foundation of the European Union, now and in the future". This stance is supported by the major political parties, on both Left and Right, as well as by the general public.
But the EU's "unique" institutional structure, with its mix of intergovernmental and supranational elements, should also be preserved. "The successful Community method continues to be of the greatest importance to the process of European integration", government spokesmen have stressed. Yet it is not in favour of a significant further transfer of competences to the European level, either in existing or new policy sectors. If new policies are called for, these should be dealt with primarily in the national context, using the European Union only as a means for coordinating national positions and for setting broad guidelines. The Dutch government considers the European Constitution more as a refined codification of the existing treaties, and an improvement of decisionmaking procedures than as a new political and legal source for generating legislation.
Most analysts in the Netherlands share the view that if the Constitution has been simply presented as another round of treaty reform hardly anybody would have objected. The Dutch "no" should certainly not be taken as a sudden popular rejection of the EU. The process of European economic integration - including enlargement and the euro - is almost invisibly interwoven with Dutch society, and has long been taken for granted by a large majority of the Dutch population. But overzealous political interference from Brussels is resented, particularly in those fields (justice, police cooperation, fundamental rights) where the Dutch feel that their own constitutional arrangements are for the time being better than the European ones. Hardly anybody in the Netherlands wants to put further European projects (enlargement, institutional and financial reform) on the backburner, but henceforth Dutch negotiators in Brussels have to take more account of demands at home.
(To be published in: Europe?s World (Brussels), Autumn 2005)