Belgium and the Netherlands, two founding members of the European Union, are increasingly divided about what that project now means. The EU’s Reform Treaty is now the focus of that dispute, but its roots go deeper. At one point, according to press reports, the row became so serious that French President Nicolas Sarkozy had to intervene.
Europe cannot afford a dogfight between these two founding member states, so it’s high time to put emotions aside and review their differences on the future course of European integration. As a former Dutch State Secretary for European Affairs and Benelux Coordinator, I believe that the Netherlands and Belgium can once again play complementary roles.
From the very beginning, these countries have represented the different aspects of Europe’s identity: Belgium, as an industrial country, continentally oriented, bilingual, and an intermediary with southern Europe, and the Netherlands with its strong agricultural and trading tradition and its Anglo-Saxon and Atlantic orientation.
Of the two, Belgium tends to be more uncritically supportive of the EU. Polls show that more than 80 percent of Belgians want yet more integration, whereas roughly 50 percent of the Dutch describing themselves as Euroskeptics. They value the Union for its economic benefits, but are wary of its politics.
Belgian-Dutch cooperation has in years past been essential in helping Europe to move forward. The Benelux Economic Union treaty of 1944 was an early testing ground for the Europe of the Six, and it was the joint Benelux Memorandum, fathered by the far-sighted J. W. Beyen and presented in Messina in 1955, that gave the impetus to the creation of the common market. Indeed, it was the basis on which Belgian Foreign Minister Paul-Henri Spaak and his colleagues worked when setting the scene for the Treaty of Rome and the European Economic Community.
The Spaak committee devised a system that balanced the voting power of states of varying size. Clearly, a system of one vote per member state would have meant domination by Europe’s smaller states. Conversely, a system based on population would have gone too far in favoring the big ones.
Balance was achieved partly by a system of weighting of votes in the Council of Ministers, where most decisions are taken. With each enlargement of the Union, this system of decision-making has been largely maintained.
The equilibrium in voting rights between small and large member states was also secured by vesting exclusive authority to propose regulation in the Commission, which expresses the common interests of the Community. This authority was reinforced by requiring unanimity among member states to overrule the Commission – a provision that has strengthened the smaller states against the larger ones.
As open economies, Belgium and the Netherlands have both been interested in developing the internal market, while differing in their methods. Belgium followed the mainly French monetarist school, while the Netherlands shared Germany’s preference for economic convergence before committing to exchange-rate parity. Once President Valéry Giscard d’Estaing and Federal Chancellor Helmut Schmidt made the joint Franco German proposal for the Economic and Monetary Union (EMU), both Belgium and the Netherlands worked together to achieve that common goal. Along with Luxembourg, they were an important factor in creating EMU.
In 1991, when the Netherlands held the European presidency, Belgium supported its far-reaching draft for a treaty of European Union. The Dutch proposed bringing all European decision-making – economic, foreign policy, justice, and home affairs – into a single framework. The proposal turned out to be a step too far and subsequently went down in Dutch history as “black Monday, named after the day on which the then foreign minister, Hans Van den Broek, faced near-unanimous opposition in the European Council of Ministers. Belgium, though, was the one member state that supported the Dutch in this brave venture.
But the Belgians and Dutch have also been less than cooperative at times. When it came to voting rights in the European Parliament and in the Council, the Dutch fought doggedly to get one extra vote in Amsterdam in 1991 and another in Nice in 2000. This may have satisfied nationalist feelings in the Netherlands, as the country is 1.5 times the size of Belgium, but it did not go down well in Belgium. The two countries also found themselves in opposing camps over the war in Iraq, and, of course, in their attitudes about further political integration.
The Netherlands’ current reserved stance on further political integration is not in its broader interest. But Belgium could have shown greater understanding for the Netherlands’ position after Dutch voters decisively rejected the proposed European constitution in the mid-2005 referendum.
Belgium and the Netherlands need to resuscitate their cooperative efforts within the Benelux framework. The Benelux economy is the EU’s fourth largest. Belgium will be serving on the United Nations Security Council for the next two years, and has indicated that it wants to give its mandate a European dimension. The coming period could thus be used in both countries to review traditional positions and reflect on how European policy can best serve their common needs.
Traditionally, the Netherlands has thought of itself as the smallest of the EU’s large member states. But others generally see it as the largest of the small. Accepting this view could have a healthy impact on its behavior in the EU. After all, the three largest EU states – Germany, Britain, and France – can be expected to seek agreements among themselves about the Union’s future shape, so the Benelux countries’ common goal should be to influence their actions and ensure that their thinking is acceptable to the whole community.
Laurens Jan Brinkhorst is the former Minister of Economic Affairs of the Netherlands. This article is published by Daily News Egypt in collaboration with Project Syndicate/Europe’s World, www.project-syndicate.org and www.europesworld.org.
