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Nermin Aydemir
JTW
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Friday, 9 January 2009
As it is well known, the constitution of the Union, which is one of the turning points on the road of integration, has been rejected in the Netherlands with an amount of 61.6% in the election, held on the 1st June 2005 after two days of the refuse of the text in France. The Dutch “nee”s not only damaged the implementation of the Constitution seriously but also hindered the realization of the political integration.[1] At first glance, such a great amount of reject ratio seems confusing if one takes into consideration the liberal and the multicultural structure of the Dutch society and the statute of the Netherlands as one of the six founder states of the EU. Nevertheless, the refuse of the constitution dates back to a history, that cannot be regarded so much groundless and the Dutch society has refused much more than solely the articles of the Constitution.
When analyzing the results of the referendum, top priority should be given to what comes into the mind in the Dutch society, when talked about the Constitution. Even though globalization is the leading tendency in the contemporary age, the significance of the nation-states is still very much valid. That is to say, shifting from the structure of nation-states towards a supranational body is highly difficult by its own. On the other hand, no matter from which perspective it is defined, solely the presence of a text, called the Constitution, strongly symbolizes the transition from nation-state structure to a supranational body. Furthermore, like many other European societies, the Dutch people regard the integration of the EU as the source of the growing economic problems in their country. For the reasons given above, the Dutch people strictly reject all the manners that would carry them to a unified nation, an execution, or a state. In this context, it is possible to say that the Dutch society identified the integration process with the Constitution and reacted quite repressively on the first occasion they found.
Leading Factors in the Rejection of the Constitution
Economic Reasons
The economic difficulties in the Netherlands have highly strong effects on the no votes in the referendum. Especially the lower and the middle classes in the Dutch country face significant economic problems which they have never met before. This leads to a dramatically accelerating tension within the culture of welfare and consumption. Currency change from the Dutch Guilder to the common monetary unit of the EU is one of the most important reasons of the economic problems in the Dutch society. On the other hand, globalization and the economical liberalization trends shifted manufacturing places. Just as the other big corporations of the Union, Dutch firms also prefer to make their investments in the undeveloped or newly developing countries of the world, rather than paying the high product costs in the developed states. In other words, it is much more profitable to invest in the Central and Eastern European states than to continue producing in the old EU countries. This situation brings Dutch people come face to face with highly increasing unemployment rates as well as the other old EU members. All these factors decrease the tolerance against “other” elements in the country of tolerance and unfortunately make the foreigners, living in the country, to be seen as the main source causing all these difficulties.
Increasing Nationalism
As it is well known, opposition to the “other”- especially to Islam- has dramatically increased world wide since the attacks on the WTO on 11th September 2001. The terrorist attacks also influenced the Netherlands seriously, in which the sociological structure was highly inclined to such a motivation. The radical, anti-immigrant LPF (Lijst van Pim Fortuyn, the List of Pim Fortuyn) got more than the 16% of the votes in the parliamentary election held in 2002 and became one of the three founders of the I. Balkenende Cabinet despite being newly founded and participating to the elections for the first time. The murder of the radical party leader Pim Fortuyn and later the one of the marginal columnist and filmmaker Theo van Gogh further raised the tension, already present in the Dutch country. The second case was much more provocative than the first one as differently from the fist case, the murderer of van Gogh was an immigrant, coming from Morocco. Due to all these reasons an accelerating racist tendency has unfortunately taken place in the Netherlands, which was used to be frequently symbolized multicultural life. After the death of van Gogh, many protests and demonstrations have been held in the Netherlands. Aggressions against Muslims; firing centers, which belong to the Muslim communities, such as schools and mosques have became the ordinary news of the Dutch media. Black schools, immigrant ghettos; the concepts of native and foreign (autochtone-allochtone) are the most popular concepts in the Dutch community.
The policies of the Minister of Foreign Affairs and Integration, Rita Verdonk are also highly considering. The language courses, held in public schools, for teaching immigrant students their native languages have been abolished in the summer of 2004. Furthermore, the process of immigration has been made too much strict through the regulations accepted recently in the Dutch Parliament. On the other hand, Verdonk’s last proposal, about receiving the Dutch nationality is also interesting. The Minister of Foreign Affairs and Integration considers acquiring the Dutch nationality as the last phase of the integration process and offers a ceremony in the city hall, to the person, who becomes a Dutch citizen.
In other words, the raising nationalism has an explicit effect on the no votes of the Dutch people. It is possible to analyze the nationalism in a two-dimensional structure when dealing with the rejection of the European Constitution. On the one side, nationalism, as being the dominant tendency of the current political life in the Netherlands, makes the Dutch people devoted to their national identities much more than ever before. On the other hand such nationalism makes the Dutch also much more conservative and even aggressive to non-Dutch elements. Namely, it is possible to say that one dimension of the raising nationalism prevents deepening process, while the other hinders the extension. In other words, the Dutch people strongly oppose to transfer their national sovereignty to a higher authority, called Brussels by sticking to their national values much more than ever before. Furthermore, people living in the Netherlands highly resist the extension process as they accuse the new comers and would-be member states as the responsible agents of the economic difficulties. At this point, the gap between the Western European countries and the new members has also a very determining affect. People living in the former member states explicitly do not feel themselves so much close to people living in the Central or Eastern parts of this continent. Several cultural, social, economic, political differences between these two regions hinder a genuine relationship between former and new member states of the Union. In this context, the membership of countries such as Bulgaria, Romania, Turkey and Croatia seems to cause much more trouble.
The Most Discussed Issues of the Constitution in the Dutch Public Opinion
Due to all these reasons, the Dutch people strongly reject a common flag, an anthem, a capital city, and a celebration day under the concept of the EU even if all these have only a symbolic value. No matter how the power of the president of the EU Council is limited, solely the presence of such a statute causes strong aggression in the Dutch community. The priority of the Law of the Union dates back to 1960’s but the Dutch voters obviously did not want to ratify a text mentioning this fact in an atmosphere of increasing nationality. Besides these, the Dutch people want to be sovereign in their external relations. The Common Security and Defense Policy of the Union was one of the most opposed issues before the referendum. On the other hand the Dutch society is considerably antagonistic to a common European armed force. They are afraid that the Netherlands would not have any voice on the common force of the EU while carrying the huge costs in a considerable amount of such an army.
Despite being one of the most little countries of the Union, The Netherlands is the 6th largest contributor to the EU budget after Germany, France, Italy, Britain and Spain. The Netherlands contribute an amount of 5.455 billion Euros annually. (Germany 21.862, France 16.789, Italy 13.664, Britain 12.845, Spain 8.197 billion Euros). In addition to this, the Dutch contribution per head is 180 Euros each year and this is the largest amount in the Union. Furthermore, the Netherlands is also on the top of the list of net contribution with an amount of 2.9 billion Euros.[2] (While analyzing these numbers, one should also keep in mind that the Dutch investments, only in Poland was 5.633 billion Euros according to 2003 data of DeNB, namely the economic problems, taking place in Holland can not be explained solely by the expenses of the EU.[3]) In this context, a comment with a title of Zonnige Toekomst Zonder de EU (Sunny Future Without the EU), taken place on the date of 20.06.2005, in one of the most popular news papers in the Netherlands (De Telegraaf) is worth paying attention. In this comment, the Dutch annoyance against the contribution of almost 3 billion Euros takes place and it is argued that actually the no votes to the Constitution would actually be positive to the Netherlands.[4]
In an atmosphere, where significant economic difficulties are present and nationalism is the most dominant ideology; it is too much optimist to expect from the Dutch people to stop criticizing the contributions to the EU budget or willingly accept to be executed from Brussels instead of The Hague.
Besides these, the tendency towards extending the areas decided through majority voting instead of unanimity is another factor increasing the concerns of the Dutch society. The Dutch public opinion is afraid of losing its voice considerably after the veto power is “taken away” due to being a small scale country.
In addition to this factor, one more reason to reject the Constitution, relating the small scale nature of the Dutch country is the small number of the Dutch parliaments in the EU Parliament. In the case the Constitution comes into practice, the number of total members of the Parliament will increase to 750. According to this change it seems that the Parliament will be more democratic than it is today. But on the other hand, the Dutch citizens are still rightfully afraid that they will not have any voice with a parliamentary number of 25 in the EU Parliament. Furthermore, as it is especially mentioned by the radical rightist party LPF, many Dutch citizens do not think that their national parliaments in The Hague do not protect their interests and are afraid that a supranational parliament in Brussels will totally ignore the interests of the citizens.
Besides these national concerns, the LPF argued that the Netherlands migration and asylum has been increased as a consequence of the extension of EU and criminality increased considerably after foreigners resided during its no campaign before the referendum.
Not only the LPF, but also the radical leftist Socialist Party acted also against the Constitution before the referendum was held. Meanwhile, it is really interesting that the two opposite agents in the political spectrum of the Netherlands share similar arguments against the Constitution. The main arguments of the SP were that, the more integration of the EU meant a larger financing. The SP identified the privatization process with the integration and sectors like health and transportation would be privatized in the road towards further integration in order to meet the costs of a larger, supranational EU. Furthermore, the SP had also cultural arguments and claimed that ratifying the Constitution meant accepting the brutal practices taking place in the other EU countries such as bull fights in Spain.
Home Politics
As it is said before, the main reason of rejecting the Constitution is the discomfort, taking place in the Dutch society. Therefore, the Dutch people also regarded the referendum as an opportunity to express their lack of confidence to the Balkenende Cabinet as well as an instrument for accepting or rejecting the Constitution. On the other side, the Dutch Prime Minister Balkenende also abstained from softening up him by imposing the articles of the Constitution, which were already strongly opposed in the Dutch society. On the other side, although Balkenende was seriously concerned with the Constitution as being a leader of a significant member of the Union, his anxiety against the disapproval in the referendum is not as high as French President Chirac, as not having the responsibility of an initiator. Namely, all these reasons caused a lack of information towards the Constitution in people’s mind in the Netherlands. Indeed, the major factor (with a proportion of 32%) of the rejection was insufficient information about the text according to a survey, held by Euorobarometer[5].
On the other side, the rejection of the Constitution in France, two days before the referendum in the Netherlands, made the Dutch people to act in much more comfort than the former country as the yes or no votes would not have a practical effect. That is to say, it is possible to talk about a “domino effect”.
Turkey
The candidacy of Turkey did not play a very significant effect on the refusal of the Constitution caused by. The Dutch society took their daily problems into consideration when voting in the referendum rather than refusing the membership of Turkey, which seems possible only after a period of ten years or later. Furthermore, Turkey would not directly posses the right of free movement immediately entering the Union.
Conclusion
To conclude, it will be a very short-sighted analysis to explain the rejection of the Constitution in the center of tolerance with a quite high amount such as 61.6% with the rejection of the changes the Constitution will bring, in case it is approved. Various economic, social, ideological factors took role on the Dutch “nee”s in the referendum. The Dutch public opinion identified their problems with the integration of the EU, and rejected not only the Constitution but also the whole integration process in the referendum, held on the 1st of June. On the other side, when the production costs of the developed Western Europe and the Central and Eastern Europe are compared, it is very obvious that many economic indicators, especially the unemployment rate, will not become better in the future. When all these are taken into consideration, the tension in the Netherlands unfortunately seems to grow further. The trouble, which especially takes place between the lower and middle classes in Europe, is prone to further aggravate if the problems cannot be solved. In this context, the Dutch people, as well as the other European societies seem to be more protectionist and even aggressive. Lastly, the decision makers should also take their societies into consideration as well as other factors when making and implementing policies.
[1] http://www.abhaber.com/haber_sayfasi.asp?id=5757
[5] http://europa.eu.int/comm/public_opinion/flash/fl172_en.pdf
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