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

diagnosis
The Netherlands not only has a preference for economic integration, depoliticisation
and technical embedding of European policy, but also has
traditionally favoured the ‘Community method’ of decision making. This
method fits in well with the traditional, more or less routine and technical
legislative and decision making procedures for negative market integration.
What is important for a small country like the Netherlands is that this
method enables the European Commission to play a crucial role as an independent
representative of the general interest of the community and as
the defender of the Treaties, while the European Court of Justice overseas
compliance of adopted legislation and regulations. This reduces the risk of
crude power politics by the larger countries. This method is also relatively
transparent thanks to the involvement of the European Parliament. As a
corollary to this, the Dutch policy elites have traditionally felt a profound
distrust of what is known as the intergovernmental method, with its
dominant role for political (power) plays by the major countries in the
European Council and the Council of Ministers (wrr 2003: 232-3 and 238-
9). However, it would be a misunderstanding to interpret this preference
for the Community method as an ideologically driven desire for an ultimately
federalist outcome. Dutch governments have largely been opposed
to ‘grand’, let alone federal blueprints for further integration. Moreover,
they have consistently demanded that decisions on the transfer of sovereignty
from national to supranational institutions be preceded by lengthy
and detailed intergovernmental negotiations (Van Keulen 2006: 98).
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2.4.2 the traditional method of legitimisation under pressure
What are the consequences of the transitional phase in which the eu
currently finds itself for the legitimacy of eu policy in the Netherlands?
Has the specific Dutch method of legitimisation (as a result of this?)
become threatened by the various outcomes since the 1990s? Let us begin
with a brief look at the general trends of support for the eu in the Netherlands.
Dwindling but still strong support for integration among the Dutch
population
Opinion polls show that the general level of support for European integration
among Dutch citizens (expressed as the percentage of citizens that
consider membership of the eu a ‘good thing’ and the percentage of citizens
that think that eu membership has benefited their country) compared
with citizens in other member states has remained relatively high since the
1970s. Since the peak in the early 1990s support has, however, slightly but
regularly dropped (see graphs 2.2 and 2.3 and cpb and scp 2007: 31-40).
Around 1990, almost 90 percent of the Dutch population supported the