Rediscovering Europe in the Netherlands - St Antony's College ...

safeguards and direct citizen participation
as a source of protection of fundamental rights. As a result, national
ombudsmen seldom utilise European law to scrutinise national measures.
Instead, they tend to advise citizens that they complain to the European
Commission or the (national) courts. The study also indicates that national
ombudsmen have received virtually no complaints concerning the nonimplementation
of eu law. Moreover, they are often also lacking in the
necessary knowledge regarding the intricacies of eu law. 6
4.3 direct citizen participation: direct, deliberative
and e-democracy
4.3.1 introduction
At a time when the perceived gap between Dutch citizens and politicians is
attracting a lot of attention, it is hardly surprising that alternative forms of
citizen participation are on the increase. In October 2006, the National
Convention presented proposals to give citizens a greater and more direct
say in the national political system, by calling for the introduction of referenda
and citizen forums. As it was composed of a group (albeit a select one)
of academics, politicians and opinion makers, the National Convention
could itself be regarded as a form of direct consultation. This section will,
via a (comparative) literature study, analyse to what extent such initiatives
might contribute to the legitimisation of eu policy. To that end, in section
4.3.2 the pros and cons of referenda on European issues and decisions will
be evaluated. In section 4.3.3 the focus will be on experiments with deliberative
democracy, which seeks to stimulate the processes of common
opinion formation either by physical interaction and consultation or via
the Internet. In the latter case, we refer to this as digital or e-democracy.
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4.3.2 preferenda instead of referenda
A referendum enables citizens to vote for or against a proposed policy decision.
The prospects that referenda will actually reinforce democratic decision
making processes are currently being intensely debated both in
academic literature and in politics. Two attempts have been made to incorporate
referenda into the Dutch constitution. The required majority was,
however, not reached, which makes the Netherlands to date one of the few
countries in the eu without any formal arrangements for organising referenda
(Kortmann 2007). Nevertheless, referenda have been held at the local
level. More important in the context of this study, however, is the fact that
the only national referendum in recent history (which was in fact organised
on an ad hoc basis due to the lack of general provisions) concerned the
ratification of the European Constitutional Treaty. Partly as a result of this