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

diagnosis
gap between global and European developments on the one hand and regional trends on
the other. …
Given these developments, the opposition between the intergovernmental and supranational
element of the eu offers little in the way of a solid basis in the debate and negotiation
process on governance. If anything, such labels tend to paralyse the process. In the
first place, they link every innovation that deviates from the familiar Community
methods to a political battle between proponents and opponents of Europe. Secondly,
they appear to suggest that every alternative to the Community method is by definition
second-best, ‘soft’ and therefore inferior. (wrr 2003: 239-40).
The tendency to ignore this intertwining of European and national democratic
channels and the increased importance of domestic actors as links
between sensitive European policy and citizens still causes problems for
the Netherlands, as evidenced by the negative outcome of the referendum
on the Constitutional Treaty. The studies commissioned by the wrr for
this report show that, as a result, ‘Europe’ enjoys virtually no political or
social embedding in the Netherlands. The input into the (Dutch) policy
on Europe through mechanisms of representation and accountability with
regard to European decisions runs up against obstacles in the traditional
channels that are supposed to connect citizens to national and European
politicians. For example, increasing parliamentary control over the development
of Dutch standpoints depends partly on the embedding of Europe
in party democracy. However, as stated in chapter 1, the promising manifestos
on Europe which most parties produced internally following the
negative outcome of the referendum did not lead to more attention being
paid to Europe in the subsequent national election campaign. Even where
the question of power is prominent on the agenda at both the European
and national levels, Europe plays no role in the national election battles –
at least, this was the experience during the Dutch general elections of
22 November 2006. The substantive gap between what exercises the political
party families at European level and their sister parties in the Netherlands
is also only rarely bridged by the occasional mep or parliamentary
party specialist. The activities of the majority of national meps generate
little in the way of political or media attention and thus are only partially
visible to the public.
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Defective debate and limited media attention
This vacuum is exacerbated in the Netherlands by the absence to date of a
debate among political heavyweights with diverging views regarding the
present and future significance of the eu for the Netherlands, the specific
Dutch ambitions in specific areas of European policy and the ways in