The Shape of Dutch EU Policy

This article has been rattling around my head for a while - since before the official formation of the Dutch government - but I never got around to writing it. At the very end of September, I attended a lecture by Wepke Kingma, Chief Director for European Integration at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs on the challenges facing Dutch European policy. Of course, this was before the new government came in (though we were pretty sure about how the coalition would turn out), but it was very interesting to hear about how the Dutch government generally sees itself in the EU.

The Dutch EU role:

When it comes to how the Dutch government view the changes in the EC/EU over the decades and how the power structures affect its influence, it sounded familiar to me. I've often argued that increased power for the Council (or European Council) is counter to the interests of small states, and that the supranational aspect of the EU generally serves small states better. This seemed to be the Dutch experience, with worries over the growing power of the European Council as the Commission is weakened, as well as enlargement. Vetos are of little use as they are a "nuclear option" in negotiations and make you unpopular and less influential in future negotiations; also, it benefits big states more as smaller states are more easily pressured under a unanimous voting system. The Dutch strategy for dealing with enlargement and the "big 3" is to have well-developed positions on all European policies to ensure that the Netherlands is a reliable negotiating partner; and this also feeds into coalition-building on issues. I was a bit surprised that coalitions in the Council are very stable, but it makes sense as it is hard and time consuming to constantly form new voting/negotiating coalitions.

One aspect of the Dutch relationship with the EU that is different from Ireland, and perhaps other small states, is the "founding member" status of the Netherlands. Enlargement seems to be seen as a dilution of identity and influence - the original 6 were described as a "nuclear family", and I couldn't help thinking of the Dutch word "gezellig", which is a bit untranslateable, but means something lke "cozy". Money and the dilution of identity seem to be at the core of Dutch worries over the direction of the EU. However, it seems important to note how integration and supranationalism is seen as an important way of defending the influence and role of small states in the EU struture. While sovereignty may be viewed as being lost through the ending of the veto and supervision by the Commission, small states seem to view this as (generally, though it depends on the area), as protecting their position and opening up new opportunities to influence Europe's direction. Supranationalism can be a goal of nationally-minded member state governments too, it seems.


Multi-annual budget:

This is a big issue as it will be decisive in the EU's capabilities over the next few years (and therefore also decisive on how new Lisbon institutions such as the EEAS develops, and it is being decided in an atmosphere of austerity. Though there's undoubtedly a large element of self-interest in the EP's defence of the budget, and lobbying for increases, there is a good argument that you cannot increase the responsibilities of the EU institutions without having the money available to effectively carry out its duties.

The Dutch position seems to be that they are quite happy to continue paying as a net contributor, as the internal market is so important to the Netherlands, but CAP and the Cohesion Funds are areas where the Netherlands wants to see cuts and reforms. They want the EU budget to be set at around 1% GNI, and have priorities for the EU: Frontex (immigration control at the EU border), energy & climate, and the EEAS, among others. Therefore they want cuts in CAP and Cohesion funds to pay for increases elsewhere. The Dutch seem to view agriculture spending as necessary to aid declining villages and for the maintanence of the countryside ("landscape preservation"), but are otherwise looking for the CAP section of the budget to be reduced heavily. Cohesion funds are viewed as a good policy to help make the poorer member states wealthier, and therefore more able to buy more goods from the richer member states (the thought also occured to me that this is also a good strategy to steadily increase the number of net contributors; or rather slowly spread the burden of contributions). However, cohesion funds should focus on the poorer member states and not be directed to the wealthy countries' poor regions as well. There was a mention of asking for a rebate if the Netherlands didn't get its way, but this was heavily downplayed (my impression was that they viewed it as a childish strategy that wouldn't win them any friends and would be counter-productive in their coalition-building strategies).

My own thoughts on this are that CAP clearly needs to be reformed (as Kingma pointed out, the newer member states will soon join the CAP fully and this will add to the strain on the budget), but I doubt that restricting cohesion funds to only the poorer countries is a good idea in the long run. Perhaps I'm biased because I come from a poorer region, but I think that all member states need to be involved in the cohesion fund, and that if you break their link with it (in that they feel that they're not getting anything out of it), it will come under increasing pressure for cuts despite its value for the good of the internal market. What is clear is that the EU is definitely a "transfer union" and always has been. It consists of a number of different policies transfering money for different projects to help out poorer regions and areas, as richer areas benefit from larger and freer markets. I would personally defend this transfer union as being a social and economic good, though it could do with reform. Still, the battle over the budget is likely to be vicious, as the EU is in some ways a rudimentary welfare state for states, and battle lines have already been quite firmly drawn.

Introducing rebates into the equation would be highly damaging, as rebates are paid for by other countries (I'm reminded of a story of the Polish government asking the British government how much more they would need to pay to join the EU because of the British rebate [it was a sore point obstructing enlargement negotiations]. That image of a poorer country asking how much it would need to pay a richer country - and a champion of enlargement at that - due to its own obstructionism of the budget is something that sticks with me as a symbol for just how selfish and immoral rebates are).


Immigration and asylum:

With Geert Wilders' PVV supporting the minority coalition government, this is obviously a big issue in the Netherlands today. Justice and Home Affairs may be a big European focus for this Dutch government, as Kingma suggested that JHA was an area where the Netherlands wanted to see more action. The Lisbon Treaty moved JHA firmly into our "Union method", so this area could see a leap in activity. The challenge for the Netherlands here is to convince the other member states that they don't want to re-nationalise immigration, but to toughen the rules on illegal immigration. Immigration is such a big issue across many member states that they might be able to win some support for changing the system. Also, there are lots of "Dublin cases" before the European Court of Human Rights on the current system, and this could generate pressure for refrorm as well (the Dublin system is where immigrants into the EU are sent back to the country they first entered so that they can't "shop around" the member states - there have been complaints particularly about the Greek processing of applications).


Enlargement:

This touches on the identity, money and influence concerns of the Netherlands. The Dutch government wants tougher enforcement of the enlargement conditions to ensure that there is the legal and institutional change necessary to join, and that the EU moves away from the old practice of giving in to pressure to enlarge quickly. Kingma raised the prospect that a Dutch parliament may end up refusing to give the green light to enlargement if it felt that the candidate country hadn't fully reformed.

Naturally Turkey is a big topic, but it wasn't really directly addressed on its own. However, in the question-and-answer session, it was suggested - but not directly said - that the Netherlands may be negotiating or hoping that the Turkish government would accept some conditions on its voting weight. I stress that this was not directly or explicitly said, and that I am getting this impression from something said by someone talking in their second language rather than their mother tongue. Still, enlargement has seen restrictions on the free movement on workers and access to CAP funds, so if a "privillaged relationship with the EU" is unacceptable for Turkey and other member states, then I wouldn't be surprised if the idea of gradual integration and gaining of rights in the institutions hadn't surfaced in some national administration. If such an idea has surfaced, I hope it will be resisted.

Chasing Brussels #5 and Chasingbrussels.eu

Chasing Brussels episode 5 is out now. This week the topic is enlargement, and how the EU's enlargement policy might develop when the Lisbon Treaty is ratified. Should enlargement continue? What countries should be allowed to join? Should there be extra criteria/requirements for countries wanting to join the EU? Joining me on the podcast is Joe Litobarski and Jan Seifert.

There's also a Chasing Brussels website now at www.chasingbrussels.eu, where we'll be hosting the podcast for now on, and where you can leave comments and suggestions.

Enlarge your Horizons

The Czechs are using the impending release of a Commission report on enlargement to push the benefits of enlargement. The report will be released on Friday and is supposed to detail how enlargement has strengthened the economies of both the new and old member states.

I've mixed feelings on this. The need for EU reform is pressing now, so with more members the EU will become less and less effective. Also, the countries closest to membership, Croatia and Turkey, face opposition from within the EU and still have progress to make on meeting the conditions for membership, so it's not as straight-forward as: enlargement is good, therefore we should push on with enlargement. Romania and Bulgaria were arguably not ready for membership, and it is a lot harder to put pressure for reform on them now that they are members (that said, some older members are in need of reform too...). It would also make keeping other candidate countries to the letter of the conditions harder in the future if any current candidate got a fast-track entry. Not that that's what's being suggested.

On the other hand, it would be good to open up more markets (by increasing the EU market size) and secure free trade. I'd like to see the report to see how much enlargement has added to the EU economy and how convincing the evidence is. I could see lots of conditions attached to the free movement of people, etc for any new member states that join over the next few years, though - if so many member states did it during the 2004 enlargement, then I can't see a more open approach any time soon. Would enlargement help at all in the current crisis? The 2004 member states attracted investment to grow; such investment is very scarce now.

Still, it's good to know that the Czech deputy prime minister has his enlargement priorities right:

""In general, Croatia is a country that belongs to the community - I go there almost every summer," he added. "It has a strategic value.""

Turkey's PM to arrive in Brussels on Sunday

Turkey's PM, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, hopes to kick-start the accession negotiations between Turkey and the EU during a three days of meetings in Brussels starting Sunday. (Well, accelerate – the negotiations are still ongoing, but at snail’s pace).

Other initiatives designed to get Turkey back on the yellow brick road to Europe include finally appointing a full time EU negotiator. Turkey has also made some progress in the area of minority rights, such as launching the new Kurdish-language channel, TRT 6, which is hopefully an indication that further progress will be made.

While there are many issues for Turkey to resolve before it can accede to the Union, most notably regarding human rights and Cyprus, the most frustrating thing for Turks must be that, as much as they may reform, their EU destiny is largely out of their hands. The threat of a French referendum on Turkish entry, which would most likely result in a "No", is one example of this.

The term used to explain this is "enlargement fatigue" on the part of the EU; the idea that the EU can only take on so much. While a lot of this is quite true - the institutions need reform to handle deals between 27+ member states and peoples - it is only part of a wider "change fatigue".

The EU has gone through a protracted period of reform - there have been 5 Treaties (including the Constitutional Treaty and Lisbon) and 3 enlargements since 1992. The pace of change has been disappointing to some and terrifying to others, and the EU is probably unique among international organisations for the rate of reform it has seen. However the perception of change may be much greater than actual change, and the perception that the EU is a project out of the control of the electorate means that however much change is needed, it doesn't always sit well with the electorate.

This is partially to blame on the member states, who have not been far-sighted in their reforms of the EU. Too much dithering over how democratic and effective they should make the EU (or how little reform they could get away with to not upset each other and protect their positions within the system) has resulted in an inflated number of treaties without the necessary public engagement to ensure public consent to further change, never mind encouraging public interaction with the European project.

The consequent feeling of a loss of control has led to an unwillingness to accept further change. In some states, this has focused on Turkey for historical and cultural reasons (and in some cases, outright anti-Islamic reasons). For France and Germany, the size of Turkey - it will be the first country of the 1st rank in population terms to join since Britain in 1973, if it manages to join - means that whatever fears they have over loss of control have and added potency.

However, to refuse Turkey, a western-orientated country for decades with cultural and historical links to Europe, entry into the EU club would damage the EU's celebrated "soft power" not just in the Islamic world but elsewhere. Most of the EU's soft power comes from its openness and its willingness to enlarge. If Turkey reforms itself successfully, it must be welcomed into the EU.

Refusing entry to Turkey won't help restore people’s, or states’, feelings of control over the European project, only a proper debate and meaningful engagement with the electorate can.