International

Election campaigns are always characterised by ‘framing’. Parties offer the voter a choice that best suits them. For example, the liberal Europhiles of D66 and the hard right anti-EU PVV seek each other out to make the election a duel between ‘forward with the EU’ and ‘out of the EU’. And the SP? We have nothing to do with this artificial divide. We have a unique position: not ‘out’ but ‘thorough change’ – no superstate, but honest cooperation. This is radical, but also realistic – which is why we are in the heat of battle a difficult opponent, both for the establishment as for those outside it.

You’ll grasp the idea of framing if you consider the question of whether or not there should be a referendum on the EU. The PVV is keen to see one, while D66 doesn’t appear to be opposed in principle, but both oversimplify the issue: do you want a superstate or to get out of the European Union? Ever so easy, but you’re not offering the voter any realistic options.

The European Union always moves one step at a time. However much D66 wants to see a superstate, it won’t arrive overnight. No-one would vote for such, so it’s done surreptitiously: first the abolition of internal border checks, then an internal market and a single currency. Only then are we told that these were all steps on the road to superstate Europe. D66’s idea that we could leap in one go to a superstate is a flight of fancy and has, moreover, been repeatedly rejected in polls by a massive majority of the Dutch population.

Just as unrealistic is the PVV’s option of withdrawal from the European Union. Admittedly the Netherlands is too export-oriented, but to put our position as entrepot for other EU member states at risk in one fell swoop would be, to say the least, not such a great idea. It’s true of this option, as well, that scarcely one in five Dutch voters agrees.

At this election we need realistic options. The SP Congress made it clear in the discussion of the election manifesto that we are fed up of this European Union. The EU of big corporations and Eurocrats isn’t our EU. We don’t want any more diktats and want to be able to determine for ourselves how we run our pensions, health care and social security. We don’t want burdens from Brussels, but do want to come to agreements with like-minded countries on cross-border issues. We do of course want to see agreements on the environment and on organised crime. You can’t boil our position down to ‘forward with…’ or ‘out of…’ the EU.
These are senseless slogans because they’re unrealistic. But we are no less radical. With the SP too the Dutch people would soon get their referendum, on which the questions would in effect be: do you agree with our proposed treaty amendments, that we should not go along with everything and that, furthermore, the Eurocrats should be cut down to size by sending the whole of the European Commission home en masse? That’s not framing, but plain language. But we in the SP have been noted for this for many years.