The Netherlands ends EU policy of red lines
It also fell the Financial times note: under Rutte IV, the Netherlands wants to play a pioneering role in the European Union, to be a ‘locomotive’. It represents a break with the recent past, in which the prime minister in Europe has lost the reputation of ‘sir no‘ acquired. In the subtle language of a coalition agreement, they are only minor shifts, but they have the effect of shifting track switches. Signals that were red for a long time, jump to green or orange.
For example, the new coalition is ‘open to treaty changes’: the trauma of the no-referendum against the EU constitution (2005) has apparently been processed in The Hague. Likewise, she is looking ‘constructively’ at a modernization of the Stability Pact: no longer digging in the heels against any change in fiscal rules. The new cabinet is also ‘examining’ the options for a European Security Council, which Rutte III still in 2020 said that such a crisis management forum “a priori had no added value”. It can go fast.
What has changed? Certainly: D66, the European tribe of the coalition foursome, is larger than in 2017 and has the stronger negotiating position. You can see this, for example, in the intention to strengthen the European Parliament – an institution that neither VVD, CDA nor CU were ever enthusiastic about. Yet the breadth of the shifts shows that it is about more than a party political exchange along the lines of: you can go to Europe, then I can build a nuclear power station. The Netherlands is undergoing a general geopolitical reorientation.
The previous formation emerged shortly after the Brexit referendum (2016). Under Rutte III, the Netherlands established itself as the leader of a smaller group of Atlantic, frugal and free-trade EU member states – as the successor to the departing United Kingdom. The Minister of Finance Wopke Hoekstraan was striking with Scandinavians, Balts and Irish, based as a brake from France and (partly) Germany. Prime Minister Rutte, more agile than his minister, did ensure that he did not fully implement this club of the little ones. So he could simultaneously keep up with Merkel and Macron in and Paris well. Only in the great battle for EU finances in 2020 did Rutte become the face of the no.
The new coalition agreement abandons this red-line Europe policy, which in practice has often been developed into a strategy of defeat. This implies recognition of new relationships. The Netherlands does not have the blockade force of the UK, whose permanent obstruction ended with Exit. More importantly, the world-historical forces acting on the European continent require action.
This understanding – also among the VVD, CDA and CU – can be heard in the key foreign policy sentences of the coalition agreement: “By taking the position of China and Russia and the stronger focus of the US on Asia, we must more actively protect our countries, security and richer people. […] The EU must be a player rather than a playing field.” Anyone who thinks of the playing field of the internal market, where not only we European consumers but also the rest of the world can do business, collect data, collect companies – who understand that something new is being set in motion here.
It is comfortable for Rutte to make this European turn new formation of the German coalition. With her support for the corona recovery fund, Chancellor Merkel already in 2020 left behind the later coalition of frugal countries. The Scholz government will not reverse this German move towards financial solidarity. Rutte IV also ties in with the new green ambitions in Berlin in the area of climate.
the money FT wrote data from the Dutch “become more like the French”. That’s right, in the sense that men in Paris regard Europe The Hague also recognizes the importance of this. For a long time, Parisian wishes such as ‘strategic autonomy’ or ‘industrial politics’ were taboo. Now The Hague says: okay, but then „Open strategic autonomy” or (a finding in the coalition agreement) “slim industrial policy”, the European conversation opened.
This moment of reorientation – the power of blockages behind which it was tough to entrench – is tricky: it calls for a compass and personal judgment. Many will be the tasks of the new government affairs, with the Minister of Foreign Affairs leading the way. New paths are open, but how fast are we going to move, in which direction, with which partners?
Luke of Middelaar is a political philosopher and historian.
A version of this article also in NRC in the morning of December 22, 2021