The Politics of Differentiated Integration: What do Governments Want? Country Report - The Netherlands

Abstract

This report investigates the salience of differentiated integration (DI) in Dutch government discourse between 2004 and 2020. It also studies the positions of Dutch government and opposition parties on the issue of DI in selected peak-salience years (2008, 2012, 2017-2019). A multi-method analysis of parliamentary debates, speeches by the PM and government programmes demonstrated that differentiated integration (DI) is a low salience issue in Dutch politics. Our analysis of the positions of Dutch government and opposition parties demonstrated that, at first sight, both sides seem to share a position vis-a-vis DI. That is, they take a rather neutral position on multi-speed EU, leaning more to the negative side. The salience of DI somewhat increased from the European crisis onwards (after 2010). Then, Dutch representatives most commonly referred to a coalition of the willing (DI model), enhanced co-operation (DI mechanism) and Schengen (DI instance). Whenever enhanced co-operation was mentioned, it was commonly referred to in a unitary sense (i.e. all the MSs should increase co-operation). The Brexit referendum sparked another debate on DI which was particularly focussed on an a la carte EU.