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

strengthening the legitimacy of dutch eu policy: conclusions and recommendations
terrorism and cross-border crime requires a vision on the effects of measures
in terms of democratic values and fundamental rights. Meanwhile,
combined eu action in the areas of asylum and immigration requires that
choices be made between the different levels and forms of cross-border
solidarity. Tackling cross-border environmental problems has consequences
for the competitiveness of industry and the transport sector, while
a common climate and energy policy is expensive. How high can the costs
be permitted to rise, and above all, who should bear them? Choices also
have to be made between integration and diversity, between administration
by experts or democratically elected representatives. The issue of
whether and how the eu should promote common values on the world
stage, and where the boundaries of a common, shared identity lie, is also
becoming more complex (Tsoukalis 2005).
The political choices which have to be made in these relatively new areas of
eu policy are also becoming increasingly urgent in the established domains
of eu policy. With reference to the internal market, for example, the more
relevant focus has become what constitutes an ‘appropriate’ balance
between increasing globalisation, the liberalisation of the services sector
in the internal market (which can provide a long-term boost for European
economies) and the preservation of distinct national, social arrangements.
The effectiveness and efficiency of measures are no longer the only things
that count: the parameters of policies, and even the policy objectives themselves,
are becoming increasingly controversial.
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Moreover, choices such as these always impinge on the relationship
between the eu as a collective and the individual member states. For example,
a robust European asylum and immigration policy in an eu of 27
member states is difficult to imagine as long as individual member states
retain national vetoes. Combating terrorism and tackling cross-border
crime at the European level will affect national sovereignty in the area of
criminal law. It is therefore important to link specific policy ambitions to
visions of the direction and nature of European co-operation. Otherwise
the risk arises that policy expectations are assigned to the eu which it
cannot meet. This connection is also necessary in order to prevent views
of the eu as a political system from becoming bogged down in elevated
abstractions (‘the federal union’) or in unrealistic doomsday scenarios (‘the
European superstate’), while the ambitions on concrete policy issues lead
to a feeling of ‘creeping’ integration which appears to mostly ignore those
views. The lack of fixed anchor points also underlines the need to link
specific policy ambitions to visions of the eu as a political system. Since
there is as yet no suitable terminology for discussing the eu as a political
system, the public debate tends to fall back on a ‘state-like’ vocabulary.