Thoughts from the Netherlands on the ’Creeping’ Powers of the EU
Last Friday, the government of the Netherlands published a memo on the desired and necessary role of the European Union, raising the question: “Is everything that the European Union currently does really necessary?” The document lists areas the EU should handle much more firmly – most importantly economic policies and goals, migration, internal market and defense – while pointing out issues it politely recommends the EU to stay away from and where less European integration is desirable – areas like media regulation, social security structures and so on. As Prime Minister Mark Rutte put it: "Europe has to become smaller, leaner and meaner in many areas and cost less money"
Frans Timmermans, Foreign Affairs Minister of the center-left government in The Hague points out that there is a need for “creating a European Union that is more modest, more sober."
Frans Timmermans, Minister of Foreign Affairs, The Netherlands.
Just a couple months ago, in January, conservative UK Prime Minister David Cameron delivered a speech about the crossroads that the EU community is facing and offered similar, if more direct ideas on how the EU should move forward. Brussels should leave more autonomy for the member states, he said, on achieving deeper understanding of mutual goals in economics and the common market. The UK is taking a hard look at EU membership as preparation for a vote on whether it will remain in the Union.
Not even a month later, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán gave a lecture at a Brussels think tank, Bruegel, highlighting similar themes. Part of a series of events focusing on monetary policy and the challenges confronting the EU, his remarks examined a changing EU from the perspective of Eastern Europe. I provided a brief summary at the time, but I would encourage you to have a look at the original, thought-provoking text.
In that speech, Prime Minister Orbán emphasized the Hungarian benefit of never having a broad welfare system – one of the examples the Dutch paper uses as a preferably national competence – which enabled us to implement a quickly stabilizing economic policy, resulting in an exit from the excessive deficit procedure.
The initiative in the Netherlands is important because it reinforces the fact that pro-European governments of all stripes have sometimes critical views of the direction of Europe. As the remarks from the Netherlands show, many would like to minimize the EU’s most important disadvantages – low competitiveness and lack of confidence in EU institutions. It is a rational response, these critics say, to the EU’s less-than-successful attempts to address the most pressing issues of the continent.
Though we do not believe we have all the solutions in our pocket, we welcome attempts to promote discussion about the future of European integration. As recent experience shows – ours and that of others – there’s no single orthodoxy for certain challenges. Members of the old family of Europe should be able to sit down and talk about the problems openly, with cool heads, and based on facts and mutual respect.
