Keith Middlemas - Orchestrating Europe (Text Only)

THE NETHERLANDS

Since the 1950s, the EC had been a fundamental article of faith in Dutch political and public life. Seen originally as a means to contain Germany, it became, once post-War hostility had diminished, a larger replica of the Netherlands itself, a legally based form of collective rule. Given that Dutch involvement in Benelux’s economic integration pre-dated the Treaty of Rome, this worked well in the 1960s while the EC still behaved as a collective, and when two Dutch former prime ministers filled senior posts in Brussels. But it was threatened, firstly by de Gaulle’s intransigence, and secondly by the advent of the Franco-German entente, which Dutch leaders saw as inevitably prejudicial to the aspirations of small and medium-sized states.

The Netherlands was wholly opposed to the developing practice of settling issues between heads of government (inter-governmentalism) and its governments deliberately set themselves up to act as the guarantor of small states’ rights under the Treaties. In Dutch hands, the Presidency served as a means to help the collective machine run smoothly, with none of the directive tones supplied by Giscard or Schmidt. Many of late 1970s’ and early 1980s’ changes seemed, to the Dutch, undesirable: the Franco-German understanding, the advent of the European Council, the EMS, and the backlog of delay in dealing with Commission proposals. The Dutch therefore sought QMV on a wider scale. But unlike the Belgians, they stuck to a conception of the EC which had been implanted much earlier in the Beyen Plan (see p): they tended to accept whatever ideas the Commission proposed, believing that course of action to be a correct reading of the 1957 Treaty.

A few giant companies dominated industry and treated such initiatives as Wisse Dekker’s report (see p, above) as part of their corporate strategy. The VMO’s outlook paralleled the country’s ‘instinctive political attitude, never really discussed’; which envisaged the internal market in terms of controlled adjustment rather than full liberalization – though the VMO did lobby extensively for telecoms deregulation.

Further, progressive integration was taken for granted by Dutch public opinion, together with an increasing role for the European Parliament, while progress to EMU and political union ranked as high as abolishing trade barriers. Progress was to come according to agreed procedures and deadlines, beyond the capacity of larger governments to adjust. Given its open economy, the Netherlands strongly opposed protectionist tendencies and looked outwards to international as well as European trade. Successive governments supported NATO, were generally favourable to the USA, to liberal tax regimes, and FDI rules, and were adamantly against state intervention – thus coming closer to the British interpretation than that of Germany, despite having linked the guilder to the DM since 1973-

Long habituated to ideas about social harmony, decentralization of state power and tripartism, Dutch governments supported any Commission proposals to give organized labour greater advantage vis-à-vis capital and management, and still vested some hope in Ecosoc as the forum to discuss employment policy and the social dimension. In spite of a decentralized system of administration which required endless harmonization, the Dutch impetus was often effective on the European Council.

BELGIUM

As with the Netherlands, the EC was never a matter of dispute. Belgium received great economic benefits and a status which no small country could have achieved on its own. The price – if it was a price – had to be paid in terms of the impact of EC federalism in a country whose increasingly polarized ethnic divisions reflected its nineteenth-century social evolution and the creation of the state out of two distinct elements. Whether EC membership actually accentuated the process of transforming the unitary state of 1970 into a federal one in 1990, (‘a federal state composed of communities and regions’) is unclear, but all relations with the EC and its institutions became politicized, though not necessarily in a contentious way. Each Belgian Presidency had to replicate the domestic role of government in a sort of permanent arbitrage between decentralized units.

For the majority of Belgians, their polity pre-figured what the EC would eventually become: a cooperative framework of states and institutions with a strong regional dimension and a common citizenship. These assumptions underlay the Belgian Presidency’s conduct of EC crisis management in the case of Poland, Libya and the Falklands war in 1982. On the other hand, because of complex national competences and Flemish/Walloon rivalries, long delays in incorporating EC laws were inevitable – and much criticized by the ECJ.

All-party consensus prevailed on matters concerning the economy and integration, partly because 70% of Belgium’s trade lay within the EC and partly because the EC was taken for granted as the prime source of Belgian status in the world. Any moves towards reinvigorating it, including the internal market, were welcome. But on balance, Belgian governments followed the lines set by Davignon and recommended by Dekker, because of the relatively huge part still played by their declining steel, coal and textiles sectors.

LUXEMBOURG

Living in a tiny country with no pretensions to any of the usual connotations of power, Luxembourgeois had long held a deep fear of being swamped by their neighbours. They had always been eager to propagate the idea of integration, emphasizing that progress should be achieved by legal instruments and collective action. A long history of close cooperation with Belgium and the Netherlands, predating the EC itself, showed itself in the currency link with the former dating from 1922. Despite its small population, Luxembourg had no problem with all the roles required by its status as a member.

Precisely because it was so communautaire and disinterested in larger states’ rivalries, Luxembourg had been able shrewdly to manage its Presidencies. In 1976, it helped to institute the Troika, and in 1980 to stage manage the EC-Arab talks, the North-South dialogue, and the evolution of CSCE during the Solidarity crisis in Poland.

As a fully open and integrationist state, wedded to free trade (on which its industries had developed and its banking sector had become a leader in the EC in the 1970s), Luxembourg welcomed the internal market, especially the free movement of capital which greatly benefited its own financial services. It also sought EMU, after the 1982 currency crisis in which Belgium had devalued without joint consultation. (From then on it was clear that the Belgian franc would be tied to the DM inside the EMS.) Luxembourg had wisely reduced its dependency on the steel industry and expected unequivocal benefits from EC regeneration. Yet potential problems existed, chiefly in the field of harmonization, for its banks had no wish to fit in with German requirements on taxation – especially withholding tax – nor to change the laws on banking secrecy: the Luxembourg economy benefited too much to envisage a truly level playing field.

IRELAND

Entry to the EC had offered Ireland the chance to break out from its narrowly constructed, protectionist, rather bigoted provincial identity, to become a distinct European nation. By 1980, largely through its EC links, it had also escaped the long shadow of the United Kingdom and its poor and backward economy had experienced a greater recovery, and greater politico-cultural benefits than either of the other 1973 entrants. In the early 1980s, Ireland also enjoyed regular trade surpluses 17and financial transfer payments. 18In its economic aspect at least, the public was united: 83% had voted in favour of entry in the 1972 referendum and 68 7% were to vote for Maastricht in 1992, despite the fact that previously undreamt-of legal and constitutional implications had emerged.