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

ediscovering europe in the netherlands
European integration has long been the preserve of experts from the political,
administrative and functional elites in Brussels and in the member
states. They tend to focus more on the ‘technocratic’ than ‘political’
aspects. Important results have been achieved, in areas such as the internal
market, the guarantees of permanent macroeconomic stability within this
large internal market and the benefits of more than fifty years of internal
peace and stability. These achievements, combined with the fairly limited
direct impact of European integration on the day-to-day lives of European
citizens, at best produced a ‘permissive consensus’ but more generally,
led to indifference among the citizenry. The elites did not have to burden
themselves with the legitimisation of European policy via the European
and national political processes of representation and accountability.
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However, since the early 1990s, this method of legitimisation has come
under increasing pressure. Rapid internationalisation, the processes
involved in the continual broadening, deepening and enlargement of the
eu, as well as the emergence of constitutional debates have all contributed
to an increased politicisation of European issues. Not only has joint eu
decision making become more controversial as a result, but it has also
begun attracting the attention of more – and often more assertive – citizens
and social groups with a variety of views and opinions. These citizens are
concerned with issues such as the future of the welfare state, employment,
the implications of the introduction of the euro, the democratic deficit and
national identity in a rapidly changing Europe. These are all issues which
are increasingly difficult to translate into the traditional, predominantly
technocratic European repertoire of policymakers.
The shortcomings of the traditional method of legitimisation via policy
results (output) have been particularly sharply felt in the Netherlands.
Firstly, these shortcomings were revealed relatively late in the Netherlands
– certainly compared to some other eu member states, which had already
held referenda and conducted major debates on the issue of Europe – and
have had a greater impact as a result. This has only been exacerbated by
the after-effects of the ‘Fortuyn revolt’ (named after the populist and later
murdered politician Pim Fortuyn). Secondly, politicians and policymakers
in the Netherlands are – often more than in other countries – ‘trapped’ in
technocratic mechanisms of embedding and co-ordination, as a result of
which the news media are often not encouraged to participate. Ideological
and constitutional debates on the nature and direction of European cooperation
or on political differences of opinion on specific policy issues are
virtually absent in the Netherlands. As a result, the internal and official coordination
of European policy receives more attention than the processes
of trying to reach and involve citizens in politically defined policy choices.