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

ediscovering europe in the netherlands
lems with the acceptance of the euro from 2002 onwards can in part be
traced back to this. As a result, even the legitimacy of the policy outcomes,
on which all of the efforts had been focused, was put in jeopardy.
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An important lesson from the introduction of the euro is that politicians
and government officials must not reduce the potential contribution of
civil society to only one of the legitimacy dimensions, namely results.
Many issues are no longer purely technical in nature, but require a decision
between different, sometimes conflicting interests. This leads to politicisation.
By representing a diversity of interests, civil society can effectively
make a valuable contribution. The Platform could also have fulfilled an
important role in another respect, by critically monitoring the political
decision making process in relation to the various aspects of the introduction
of the euro and thus offering a form of organised counterweight. This
contribution to the accountability function of the political decision making
process could have improved the quality of those decisions. However,
because the Platform was ‘poldered’ into the decision making procedure,
this became another important missed opportunity. This example is not
an isolated one: the technical embedding of the decision making process
surrounding the Habitats Directive also shows virtually no civil society
involvement, which in this case also led to substantial negative implications
for the ultimate implementation of the Directive (Van Keulen 2007).
5.4.3 openness to initiatives from civil society
The ‘Stop the Services Directive’ Platform discussed in section 5.3.2 was a
spontaneous initiative involving a diversity of organisations. In fact, it was
a reaction against the ’embedding’ of the Services Directive in the regular
advisory structure. By representing a voice that had until then remained virtually
unheard via the normal channels and institutions, the Platform contributed
to the quality of the decision making process. It is therefore logical
for politicians and government officials to recognise the value of such spontaneous
initiatives and to show that they are open to them. However, caution
is needed in providing (financial) support for such initiatives, and these
initiatives must also not be too readily assigned to official ‘platforms’
created by the government. This could smother spontaneity, which is the
strength of such initiatives. A certain distance can also help prevent the
old technocratic reflexes from dominating. This would prevent civil society
initiatives from becoming swallowed up in the prevailing ‘polder culture’.
Civil society initiatives do however deserve greater openness on the part
of politicians and government officials, in the form of granting access to
and allowing input into the decision making processes. This means that