The Brexit referendum result puts the Dutch prime minister, Mark Rutte, and the mainstream political parties supporting him in an awkward position. After Ireland, no country in the eurozone has closer economic and financial ties to the UK, with both nations favouring free trade and close relations to Washington. The Netherlands has huge investments in the UK and followed Britain into its wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Royal Dutch Shell, Unilever and Elsevier are all successful Anglo-Dutch multinationals.
The Dutch will want to protect these interests by giving the UK the best possible Brexit deal. Yet the sweeter that deal, the more attractive a departure from the EU is going to look to Dutch voters contemplating a Nexit. That is the Dutch dilemma: the better it protects its interests from the fallout of Brexit, the more likely a Nexit becomes.
The Europhobe Party for Freedom leader Geert Wilders was quick to claim the Brexit referendum for himself. “Hurray for the British! Now it is our turn. Time for a Dutch referendum,” he tweeted in English as soon as the result became clear. Currently leading the polls, Wilders will do everything he can to make the central theme of next year’s parliamentary elections his demand for a referendum.
Yet even if the EU were to make Brexit a relatively pain-free affair, the expectation that the Netherlands is next to leave ignores crucial differences between the two countries. The Netherlands is in the euro and if leaving the EU is a leap in the dark, what will the departure from a currency union mean? Rotterdam is Europe’s biggest port and Schiphol one of its major airports. The 17th economy by size globally, the Netherlands is among the world’s five biggest exporters, making it economic suicide to step out of the world’s biggest economic trading bloc. Germany alone accounts for more than a quarter of all Dutch exports.
Part of the appeal of leave in the UK was the indulgence in fantasies about “making Britain great again” and restoring the country as a global player in its own right. The Dutch stopped being a colonial superpower 300 years ahead of the Brits and no longer suffer from “lost empire complex”. Though the country is bigger in population and economic clout than its tiny place on the map suggests, nobody in the Netherlands will get away with claiming that other countries will rush to strike trade deals with it in the event of a Nexit. A US president would probably not even visit the place to warn it against Nexit.
The Dutch historical experience is different, too. The case for European cooperation rests on a recognition of one’s own country’s global irrelevance – making the pooling of sovereignty a logical step. In the UK this recognition is a national taboo. In the Netherlands it is a given, while the country has far fewer options outside the EU. Thanks to the spread of English the UK can align itself with the Anglosphere rather than with the EU. There is no Dutchosphere. The British empire resulted in the Commonwealth, another option outside Europe unavailable to the Netherlands. Finally, the Netherlands is not an island and people are acutely aware of the fact that you can drive a tank from Moscow all the way to Amsterdam.
All of this is not to say that Euroscepticism is not growing in the Netherlands. But apart from Wilders this is scepticism in the actual sense of the word: more and more Dutch voters are suspending judgment on whether the European project can actually work. This attitude could not be more different from the Brexiters who have firmly made up their minds on how terrible and hopeless the EU is. “Europhobes” would be a much better term for them.
To give a sense of the Dutch inclination for Europhobia: Wilders currently polls at less than 20% of the vote. The Netherlands has a real democracy rather than a first-past-the-post system so 20% really means just 20%. Every other Dutch party of any size wants to stay in the EU, though almost all of them want reform. Here too a crucial difference with the UK emerges. Reform in the Dutch context means that voters want to see their sovereignty being pooled in a more democratic, effective and accountable way. In the UK “reform” stands for a decrease in the pooling of sovereignty.
Perhaps the biggest and ultimately deciding difference between the UK and the Netherlands are the two countries’ media landscapes. In the UK a handful of Europhobe billionaires have been relentlessly pushing their anti-EU agenda through extremely powerful tabloids and broadsheets, spreading malicious lies and untruths and dominating the conversation with headlines about “EU rapists” and “broken, dying Europe”. In the Netherlands newspaper owners do not interfere with the editorial line, considerably increasing the chance of a rational conversation.
For a sense of how important this is, one might quote the most important Europhobe billionaire, Australian-born, US immigrant Rupert Murdoch. When asked why he opposed the EU, Murdoch was recently quoted as saying that this was “easy” to understand: “When I go into Downing Street they do what I say; when I go to Brussels they take no notice.”
That is British sovereignty for you. The Dutch will have a very different referendum, when and if it comes.
Read more: Why the Dutch won’t rush to Nexit and follow Britain out of the EU | Joris Luyendijk | Opinion | The Guardian
The Dutch will want to protect these interests by giving the UK the best possible Brexit deal. Yet the sweeter that deal, the more attractive a departure from the EU is going to look to Dutch voters contemplating a Nexit. That is the Dutch dilemma: the better it protects its interests from the fallout of Brexit, the more likely a Nexit becomes.
The Europhobe Party for Freedom leader Geert Wilders was quick to claim the Brexit referendum for himself. “Hurray for the British! Now it is our turn. Time for a Dutch referendum,” he tweeted in English as soon as the result became clear. Currently leading the polls, Wilders will do everything he can to make the central theme of next year’s parliamentary elections his demand for a referendum.
Yet even if the EU were to make Brexit a relatively pain-free affair, the expectation that the Netherlands is next to leave ignores crucial differences between the two countries. The Netherlands is in the euro and if leaving the EU is a leap in the dark, what will the departure from a currency union mean? Rotterdam is Europe’s biggest port and Schiphol one of its major airports. The 17th economy by size globally, the Netherlands is among the world’s five biggest exporters, making it economic suicide to step out of the world’s biggest economic trading bloc. Germany alone accounts for more than a quarter of all Dutch exports.
Part of the appeal of leave in the UK was the indulgence in fantasies about “making Britain great again” and restoring the country as a global player in its own right. The Dutch stopped being a colonial superpower 300 years ahead of the Brits and no longer suffer from “lost empire complex”. Though the country is bigger in population and economic clout than its tiny place on the map suggests, nobody in the Netherlands will get away with claiming that other countries will rush to strike trade deals with it in the event of a Nexit. A US president would probably not even visit the place to warn it against Nexit.
The Dutch historical experience is different, too. The case for European cooperation rests on a recognition of one’s own country’s global irrelevance – making the pooling of sovereignty a logical step. In the UK this recognition is a national taboo. In the Netherlands it is a given, while the country has far fewer options outside the EU. Thanks to the spread of English the UK can align itself with the Anglosphere rather than with the EU. There is no Dutchosphere. The British empire resulted in the Commonwealth, another option outside Europe unavailable to the Netherlands. Finally, the Netherlands is not an island and people are acutely aware of the fact that you can drive a tank from Moscow all the way to Amsterdam.
All of this is not to say that Euroscepticism is not growing in the Netherlands. But apart from Wilders this is scepticism in the actual sense of the word: more and more Dutch voters are suspending judgment on whether the European project can actually work. This attitude could not be more different from the Brexiters who have firmly made up their minds on how terrible and hopeless the EU is. “Europhobes” would be a much better term for them.
To give a sense of the Dutch inclination for Europhobia: Wilders currently polls at less than 20% of the vote. The Netherlands has a real democracy rather than a first-past-the-post system so 20% really means just 20%. Every other Dutch party of any size wants to stay in the EU, though almost all of them want reform. Here too a crucial difference with the UK emerges. Reform in the Dutch context means that voters want to see their sovereignty being pooled in a more democratic, effective and accountable way. In the UK “reform” stands for a decrease in the pooling of sovereignty.
Perhaps the biggest and ultimately deciding difference between the UK and the Netherlands are the two countries’ media landscapes. In the UK a handful of Europhobe billionaires have been relentlessly pushing their anti-EU agenda through extremely powerful tabloids and broadsheets, spreading malicious lies and untruths and dominating the conversation with headlines about “EU rapists” and “broken, dying Europe”. In the Netherlands newspaper owners do not interfere with the editorial line, considerably increasing the chance of a rational conversation.
For a sense of how important this is, one might quote the most important Europhobe billionaire, Australian-born, US immigrant Rupert Murdoch. When asked why he opposed the EU, Murdoch was recently quoted as saying that this was “easy” to understand: “When I go into Downing Street they do what I say; when I go to Brussels they take no notice.”
That is British sovereignty for you. The Dutch will have a very different referendum, when and if it comes.
Read more: Why the Dutch won’t rush to Nexit and follow Britain out of the EU | Joris Luyendijk | Opinion | The Guardian
