One for the Books: Europe Night Essay Competition (Shortlist)

Negotiations for the new European Union budget are slowly getting underway, but the Dutch Prime Minister Rob Jetten's response can already be anticipated: no extra money and no extra powers to the EU. In the Netherlands, the greatest political project in living memory has been reduced to the creed of "markt en munt”, market and currency. This despite Jacques Delors, the man behind the European anthem, the flag, and the Erasmus programme, having already warned: "Nobody falls in love with a market." And so it seems. The relationship between Dutch citizens and the European Union has been characterised as a "marriage of convenience," with little prospect of improvement. While Eurosceptic parties are gaining ground and the challenges of our time increasingly ignore national borders, politicians and citizens keep each other trapped in a suffocating embrace.

There is, however, another way. When former Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker was asked about the relevance of the European Union, he would invariably point to the graves of Ypres. Since Thucydides filled books with accounts of wars between sovereigns, those same city-states, principalities, and nation-states never surrendered their sovereignty for the greater whole, until now. We live, as the late Mathieu Segers put it, in a revolution where the wheel must constantly be reinvented, without us Dutch being even remotely aware of it.

For the Dutch, attention lies elsewhere. During the budget negotiations of 2020, former Prime Minister Mark Rutte brought along a Chopin biography, to make a point to the other European leaders, and perhaps even more so to the Dutch public: the Netherlands does not bend. He persevered and was able to return with clenched fists, having once again saved some pennies. The Germans could pay off yet another slice of their historical debt.

A similar unease about the European Union is visible in other parties as well, particularly during election campaigns. When the referendum on the European Constitution came around, the best anyone could come up with was the half-hearted slogan “Europe, quite important”. Diederik Samsom, as Labour leader in 2012, was advised not to talk about Europe: it would cost him votes. The stubborn Europhile decided otherwise, and the rest is history. The Ukraine referendum campaign was also not one that brimmed with fighting spirit for the European project. A leaked document revealed the following strategy: "It's about easier trade and a democratic, free Ukraine." Further justification: "We've been earning our money abroad for centuries." Just over two months later, across the North Sea, the results of a campaign built on economic arguments once again became all too clear.

Politicians prefer not to burn their fingers on the European Union, and so the gap between citizens and the most ambitious political project of our time remains impressive. An Ipsos-I&O survey found that a sobering 49% of Dutch people do not feel they have any influence on European politics. When asked who the European Union actually stands up for, only a quarter said "citizens," well behind large corporations and European politicians. Most telling of all: when asked whether they were satisfied with the EU, the share who had no idea was almost equal to the share who were satisfied (26% versus 30%). The Dutch see value in the European Union (70%), but barely know it. What you don't know, you can't love, and politicians and citizens appear to have each other in a stranglehold. Politicians avoid the European debate out of electoral fear, which means citizens do not engage with the EU. As a result, citizens seem to regard the European Union as an enlightened despot from a long-forgotten era: undemocratic, a black box, serving interests other than their own, but, undeniably, useful.

It is this Mexican standoff between voter and elected representative that keeps the European Union out in the cold. Nobody moves, yet the world does not wait. Climate, migration, defence: crises that one and all call for European solutions, but run up against Dutch rigidity. The Netherlands views the EU as a balance sheet in the meantime, too high or too low, more or less, while it is in fact a political project, and political projects require direction. Where are the debates on Balkan enlargement, a European capital markets union, on what the security architecture should look like following America's withdrawal? While the rest of Europe debates what it wants to be, the Netherlands is still arguing about what it wants to pay. The consequence is that these issues are kicked down the road, waiting for Eurosceptic parties to be punished when the opportunity arises. It would do Dutch politics, and us, as citizens, credit to make the same kind of move Prime Minister Jetten made on migration: it is time to reclaim our debate about the European Union from the fanatics.

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