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

politics and administration
3.2 the government
The government is a key actor in the eu’s political system: individual
ministers are members of the Council of Ministers and the Prime Minister
is a member of the European Council. Moreover, civil servants from various
government departments are members of all sorts of formal and less
formal networks, consultative structures and decision making committees
in Brussels. Dutch citizens consider the national government important, if
only because of its visibility. It plays a central role as part of the eu’s political
system, on the one hand, and as a link to its citizens, on the other hand.
An essential condition for better eu policy legitimisation in the Netherlands
is that the government must take the lead.
However, the previous chapter revealed that certain major obstacles to
eu policy legitimisation present particular problems for the Dutch government,
in particular the tendency to treat policy issues as purely technical
matters, leaving little scope for political opposition. This also makes it
difficult to assess how Dutch interests are represented in Brussels and
whether the government has exploited the scope and possibilities for
taking – or avoiding – its responsibilities with respect to eu policy.
75
The government’s responsibility for the preparation, adoption and implementation
of eu policy is caught between opposing forces of centralisation
and decentralisation. On the one hand, there is a need for consistent and
coherent input from the Netherlands, which requires continual co-ordination
and centralisation. On the other hand, the diverse and largely technical
nature of eu policy and legislation requires issue-specific knowledge and
the active involvement of experts, officials and (line) departments. In the
horizontal co-ordination model that the Dutch government has applied
since 1972, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs acts as the co-ordinator of this
process, in which input from line departments in the various policy issues
and fields is secured through a complex web of interdepartmental committees.
In practice, however, this attempt to accommodate centralisation and
decentralisation leads to a rather delicate balancing act. The creating of a
scope within this horizontal co-ordination model for the politicisation of
eu policy and keeping ministers accountable to their responsibilities are
sensitive matters, distributed as they are between line ministers, the
Minister of Foreign Affairs and the Prime Minister. Moreover, it is difficult
to come to a uniform strategic position which both embraces and goes
beyond individual interests. 2
Two elements in the recurrent proposals to strengthen the role of government
in the legitimisation of Dutch eu policy are relevant. The first is