ten - The Netherlands: social and economic normalisation in an era of European Union controversy

Summary

In recent years the European integration project has become increasingly controversial in the polarised political landscape of the Netherlands. The legitimacy of engaging in further deepening and broadening of European Union (EU) integration, in the further enlargement of the EU, and in a sensitive constitutional discourse on the EU has become challenged in Dutch society, which has traditionally been supportive of the EU.

Three days after the French rejected the proposal for a Treaty establishing a Constitution for the EU, Dutch voters did the same. How this message should be interpreted is still unclear. Although general support for European integration is still high (although a bit lower than a decade ago), dissatisfaction with the fast pace of enlargement and with the lack of democracy in the EU has increased strongly: in 2004 no EU citizens were more dissatisfied with European democracy than the Dutch (Aarts and van der Kolk, 2005).

The Dutch ‘Nee’ seems to differ from the French ‘Non’. Unlike the French, the Dutch debate on the Constitutional Treaty was less fuelled by a cleavage between protagonists and opponents of competing social models. The Dutch ‘Nee’ seems to express a lack of acceptance of EU policies beyond the specific content of the Treaty or of a concept such as the European social model (ESM). The Dutch ‘Nee’ results from the transformation of the EU (the deepening and broadening of EU integration, enlargement) and of changes in the relationship between Dutch citizens and the democratic political system in general.

Unlike in France, the Netherlands does not see much controversy over current EU socio-economic policies and initiatives as these are clearly not at the centre of the Dutch political debate. The Dutch political elite failed to communicate the European dimension of socioeconomic policies.

Furthermore, the changing character of the Dutch welfare state in the 1990s, from Continental laggard in the 1980s to ‘Dutch Miracle’ in the 1990s (Visser and Hemerijck, 1997), and to a normal European country by the beginning of the 21st century, has inspired the EU socioeconomic reform agenda, which in turn reinforced the direction of the Dutch welfare state in the 1990s: this explains the current lack of controversy in the Netherlands over EU socio-economic policies.