From Eurorealism to Europhilia? The 2021 Dutch Elections and the New Approach of the Netherlands in EU Politics
本文分析2021年荷兰大选如何改变联合政府内部权力平衡，使欧洲联邦主义政党D66影响力上升，进而影响荷兰在欧盟理事会中的联盟构建立场，从财政保守转向更积极合作。
In the last decade, the Netherlands has been the voice of fiscal conservatism in the European Union. This was in line with the Dutch self-perceived national interest as a net payer and creditor country and with the position of the largest Dutch government party, the Liberal Party (VVD). This conservative-liberal party has been in government since 2010 in various different coalitions. Since 2017, the centre-right, Eurorealist Rutte III-government also consisted of the Christian Democratic Appeal (CDA), the social-liberal Democrats 66 (D66) and the Christian-social ChristianUnion (CU). In 2021, the Netherlands held elections: these allowed the sitting government to continue and, after extremely long coalition formation talks, it did. The elections, however, shifted the balance of power within the coalition towards the Eurofederalist D66. The central question of this contribution is how the elections and the ensuing coalition formation have affected and will affect the position of the Netherlands in the European game of coalition building. This article has the following structure. Firstly, I describe the position of the Netherlands in the coalition politics of the Council of the European Union. Then, I turn towards the elections, the campaign, the results and the importance of EU integration for voting behaviour. Next, I discuss the coalition formation process, the coalition agreement and the distribution of offices. Finally, I discuss what the EU position of the Dutch government may be in the coming years. EU politics is all about coalition building. Under Qualified Majority Voting (QMV), majority building in the Council of the European Union depends on countries coordinating positions and voting as a bloc. For a long time, The Hague was oriented towards London and Berlin. The United Kingdom (UK) and the Netherlands shared an Atlanticist orientation and a vision of the EU as a free trade zone. In the Council, the Netherlands often voted the same as the United Kingdom (UK) (van Roozendaal et al., 2012). Ahead of Council meetings the Netherlands coordinated with the UK and other fiscally conservative, pro-trade, Northern Member States (Rood, 2018). The Netherlands also coordinates closely with Germany, in particular on issues related to the euro, as the Netherlands shares the German orientation towards fiscal discipline (Sie Dhian Ho et al., 2018). Crucially, in the political economy of the Eurozone, both the Netherlands and Germany have a structural large surplus in the current account (Rojas-Romagosa & Van der Horst, 2015). When the UK left the European Union, the Netherlands had to reorient itself (Sie Dhian Ho et al., 2018). It had to construct new coalitions, in particular to balance the Franco-German axis. The Netherlands focused on the formation of the New Hanseatic League, of Northern, fiscally conservative states (Korteweg, 2018). 11 A coalition of the Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden, Finland, Ireland, Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia. They opposed the formation of a Eurozone budget and instead believed that it should be national governments who should be responsible for keeping the EU's economy robust, which in their perspective required fiscal discipline. During the Covid19 pandemic and the ensuing economic crisis, the Netherlands operated in the Frugal Four 22 A coalition of the Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden and Austria. and coordinated with the similarly fiscally conservative German government. They opposed debt mutualization and emphasized the need for structural reforms. VVD Prime Minister Mark Rutte's tough negotiation style earned him the nickname ‘Dr No’ (Van Wiel, 2020). The Minister of Finance, Wopke Hoekstra, of the CDA, had a similar style. Iratxe García, a Spanish Socialist MEP described his behaviour during these negotiations as ‘offensive, ignorant and arrogant’ (Walker & Schaart, 2020). Despite close coordination with other fiscally conservative countries, the Netherlands had to accept many exceptional decisions during the Covid19 crisis, such as the European Commission issuing their own bonds and suspension of budgetary rules. In 2021, the Netherlands held regularly planned elections. The centre-right government of liberals and Christian-democrats fell two months before the elections over a childcare allowance scandal. The tax service had overzealously pursued minor infractions by citizens who received this allowance, singling out people with double nationalities (Otjes & Voerman, 2022). Covid19 was a blanket that covered the campaign (Otjes, 2021b). As Covid19 restrictions prevented parties from campaigning in person, the campaign was fought over social and traditional media. It focused on three televised debates (Otjes & Voerman, 2022). The central question in these concerned leadership. The popularity of Prime Minister Rutte had increased during the Covid19 period due to what Van der Meer et al. (2020) characterized as a ‘rally ‘round the flag effect’. This leadership was, however, challenged from within his government by Hoekstra, who stepped in a few months before the election as leader of the CDA and by Sigrid Kaag, the Minister of Foreign Trade and Development Cooperation and newly elected leader of D66. Rutte, who had been prime-minister for nearly a decade, is seen as a competent manager who has the ability to bring diverse coalitions together. Hoekstra played the role of stern Minister of Finance with gusto. Kaag promised ‘New Leadership’, emphasizing integrity, that her leadership would be more value-driven and that one of these values was an international orientation. As a multilingual former diplomat, Kaag had caught the imagination of the Dutch public when she had briefly served as the Minister of Foreign Affairs in 2018. The possibility of a female Prime Minister attracted progressive voters (Otjes, 2021c). In the last days of the campaign, Kaag's challenge became more credible, while Hoekstra's never really came off the ground. Substantive issues never played a major role in the campaign, not even the childcare allowance scandal. Certainly, ‘Europe’ did not play a large role in the campaign. This led some pundits to launch an online campaign ‘#EUelephant’. In their view, EU integration was the elephant in the room: very important, but not discussed (Boekestijn, 2021; Boekestijn et al., 2021). In particular the future of the euro would be a major theme. A key question was whether the crisis measures would have a lasting character – namely whether the rules of the Stability and Growth Pact (SGP) that had been waived in the crisis, would return and whether the recovery fund which issues common debt would have a permanent nature (Otjes, 2021c). The elections were both the most and the least exceptional Dutch elections in years: electoral volatility was the lowest in more than 30 years. The government retained its majority, for the first time in nearly 20 years. It actually expanded its majority which had last happened nearly a quarter of a century ago. Yet there were 17 parliamentary party groups (PPGs) in the lower house, the most fractionalized parliament in Dutch political history (Otjes & Voerman, 2022). Despite the EU not playing a major role in the campaign, the electoral victors were those most outspoken opponents and advocates of EU integration as can be seen in Table 1. The VVD was the largest party in the Dutch parliament. It got 34 out 150 seats, mainly due to the popularity of Rutte. This party favours individual freedom and responsibility on moral, economic and environmental matters and a restrictive migration policy. On European integration, it believes the Dutch national interest, often defined in economic terms, should be central. The party describes this course as ‘Eurorealist’ (Harryvan & Van der Harst, 2015, p. 275). It is particularly hostile to a ‘transfer union’, where rich countries would sustain poorer countries. Recently, the VVD has become more pro-European. In particular, it sees the EU as a way to address the issue of migration. A stricter EU migration policy should prevent asylum seekers from coming to the Netherlands. Instead they should be sheltered in countries close to the conflict regions they originate from: in the example of the current Syrian crisis, asylum seekers should be sheltered in Turkey. The VVD belongs to the right-wing of the European liberal family, Renew Europe, together with the German FDP. D66 became the second largest party with 24 seats, up from 19. This rivalled the best result of the party. It mixes left-wing and right-wing positions on the economy, for instance advocating education investment and pension liberalization. It combines this with progressive positions on migration, environmental and moral questions. The party is Eurofederalist: it favours the Netherlands integrating into a European federation where national vetoes are replaced by democratic decision-making. For D66, Europe is the only way to address global challenges such as climate change. It favoured a eurozone budget and Eurobonds long before the Covid19 crisis (Vollaard & Voerman, 2015, p. 166), although its 2021 manifesto was not very outspoken on this. D66 is at the centre of Renew Europe, together with the French LREM. The other two government parties, CDA and CU, did not expand their seats. The CDA slipped from 19 to 15 seats. It takes centre-right positions on economic, environmental, moral and migration matters. The party stands in between the VVD and D66 on EU integration, although on eurozone issues, it stands closer to the VVD. In the Christian-democratic EPP, the CDA is close to the German CDU. The final coalition party CU maintained its five seats. This party mixes left-wing positions on economic matters, refugees and the environment with conservative views on labour migrants and moral matters such as abortion. The CU is least committed to the euro and has proposed that weaker economies leave the eurozone, in line with the party's Eurosceptic past (Vollaard & Voerman, 2015, p. 127). This Eurosceptic past is also visible in the fact that until 2019, it was a member of the ECR, which it has since left for the EPP. To the left of the government, there are seven parties: the social-democratic Labour Party (PvdA), the left-populist Socialist Party (SP), the GreenLeft (GL), the deep green Party for the Animals (PvdD), the pensioners' party 50PLUS, the multicultural DENK and the intersectional-feminist BIJ1. These parties fell from 49 to 37 seats this election, a historical low point. The left is divided between the pro-European PvdA and GL, and the soft-Eurosceptic SP and PvdD (Vollaard & Voerman, 2015). The pensioners' party 50PLUS, the parties DENK and BIJ1, which tend to do well with migrant communities (Otjes & Spierings, 2021), have less outspoken positions on Europe. 50PLUS opposes a transfer union, DENK EU bureaucracy and BIJ1 the lack of democracy. To the right of the government there are Eurosceptic forces: three radical right-wing populist parties, the Freedom Party (PVV), Forum for Democracy (FvD) and JA21 as well as the Political Reformed Party (SGP) and the rural party FarmerCitizenMovement (BBB). The PVV and FvD favour a Nexit (Otjes, 2021a; Vollaard & Voerman, 2015). The PVV lost slightly (from 20 to 17), but FVD went from 2 to 8. It had morphed into an anti-lockdown party. In this process, it had lost its ‘moderate’ wing, which formed JA21. This party, for instance, is Eurosceptic but does not want the Netherlands to leave the EU (Otjes, 2021b). It shares this profile with the conservative Christian Political Reformed Party. BBB wants the EU to return to its roots as a European economic community. Finally, there is Volt Netherlands. This is the Dutch branch of a pan-European party which also has a single seat in the European Parliament (for Germany). It won three seats. It describes its own position as ‘pro-European, pragmatic and progressive’, which is close to D66, but it appears to have carved out its own niche among young and progressive voters (Leruth, 2021). Despite the fact that Europe did not play a major role in the elections, the two extreme poles of the EU dimension performed well. We can think of an EU dimension that divides voters and parties with different views of the European Union (Mudde, 2012; Ray, 2007; Szczerbiak & Taggart, 2008). On the one side, there are the hard-Eurosceptics that reject their country's membership of the European Union. On the other side, there are those who favour a fully-fledged European federation. In between, we have soft-Eurosceptics that oppose the current direction of European integration and pro-European parties that favour further European integration. In this election the Eurofederalist parties (D66 and Volt) went from 19 seats to 27 seats. The hard-Eurosceptic parties (PVV and FVD) went from 22 seats to 25 seats. The polarization on the EU dimension is clearly visible. There are specific reasons that led to this outcome (for example the appeal of Kaag as D66 leader and the choice of FVD to campaign as anti-lockdown party). But from a more distant perspective, it may be that in the absence of a substantial debate between the economic left and economic right, voters have expressed a deeper underlying division between cosmopolitans and patriots. The importance of this division has grown in the past years (De Vries, 2018). As we see the Eurofederalist and hard Eurosceptic parties winning, the question arises, ‘What role did EU integration play in voters’ considerations?’ To this end we use the Dutch et al., 2021). were about a of policy issues and their choice in the elections. 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