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

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policy results. This naturally also has consequences for the legitimacy of
European policy within national states, especially as European and national
policy cycles have become more and more intertwined. How is the Netherlands
dealing with the consequences of this pressure and this intertwining?
To answer this question, we will first offer a brief description of the traditional
Dutch method of legitimising eu policy, and then look at the implications
of these new pressures for the Netherlands.
Since the start of the European integration process, successive Dutch
governments have developed a strong preference for economic over political
integration. The elimination of trade barriers within Europe, the
creation of a stable, predictable internal market based on legal certainty and
characterised by a common trade policy vis-à-vis third countries fits in
well with a small, open economy like the Netherlands, which is so strongly
linked to the economies of its European neighbours. This economic focus
has given rise to a solid dose of pragmatism, together with a distrust of
ideological and constitutional debates in which the central focus is on
differences of opinion regarding policy content. Dutch policymakers prefer
to deal with European issues as if they were purely technical and apolitical,
and prefer to settle them in closed networks of elites and experts (Van
Keulen 2006). Other actors, such as community-based organisations and
the news media, generally have little to contribute and little influence,
either in the process of influencing policy (input) or in the implementation
(output) of that policy. Those civil society organisations that are consulted
are often absorbed into the inner cocoon of eu policy, so that their contribution
does very little to generate new perspectives or differing standpoints
with regard to the legitimisation of eu policy.
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This technical rather than social or political ‘embedding’ remains, in part,
the result of the desire for consensus in the European Council of Ministers
as well as the nature of European measures themselves, which consist
largely of technical provisions and ‘soft’ recommendations (soft law) (Raad
van State 2005). However, the Dutch tradition of pillarisation – the division
of society along religious, ideological and political lines – with its
emphasis on pragmatism and de-politicisation, and more generally, the
relatively fragmented Dutch constitutional, administrative and political
system, reinforce this inclination towards ‘poldering’, technical embedding
and legitimisation through end results (Lijphart 1974; Van Deth and
Thomassen 1999).
Technical embedding and de-politicisation also have positive aspects.
Some (eu) issues really are thoroughly technical in nature and are best
dealt with by competent specialists. According to some observers,