Early adopters

CALL them the hipsters of European neurosis. Take any of the anxieties that have lately beset Europe’s politics and you find the Dutch got there first. Concerns over fiscal waywardness in the euro zone? They were fuming at German and French profligacy over a decade ago. Asylum and immigration? The Dutch were agonising over multiculturalism while Angela Merkel was still plotting her ascent to the Bundeskanzleramt. The threat from anti-European populists? The Dutch have seen several come and go.

Such worries have now gone mainstream across Europe. So it is an interesting time for the Netherlands to take over the rotating six-month presidency of the Council of the European Union (the forum for national ministers). As one of the six founding EU members the Dutch are practised at steering the machinery, even if the presidency is not the force it once was (see article). But they are taking charge at a tricky moment. The EU was supposed to be a “fair-weather union”, says Bert Koenders, the foreign minister. Now it must prove itself in a storm.

The refugee crisis and the Paris attacks have threatened the EU’s passport-free Schengen area. Migration and security will therefore be at the top of the Dutch in-tray. Mark Rutte, the competent if plodding prime minister, should make a decent fist of the job, so far as Europe’s squabbling governments allow. But he has his own difficulties at home. The first is a bizarre referendum in April on an EU association agreement with Ukraine. The vote, triggered by a satirical website that gathered the necessary signatures, will inevitably turn into a simple test of the voters’ mood.

That could mean trouble for Mr Rutte, for like many of his EU peers he has a populist problem. Geert Wilders, a Dutch Donald Trump (with equally striking hair), is way ahead in opinion polls. His anti-Islam, anti-EU PVV outfit has dragged every party rightward on immigration. Some figures in Mr Rutte’s liberal VVD now take an eye-wateringly tough line; their coalition partner, the centre-left Labour Party, frets about refugees undermining support for the welfare state. The PVV has not always translated its poll numbers into votes. But the Netherlands’ complex party system could leave future governments with an awkward choice: bring Mr Wilders into office (or rely on his support), or form an unwieldy coalition designed solely to keep him out of it.

This dilemma is hardly unique to the Netherlands. But Dutch Euroscepticism has certain peculiarities. Small and highly dependent on trade (exports contribute 32% to GDP), the Netherlands does not have the luxury of British-style Euro-contempt, as is apparent at any of its hundreds of land border crossings. Indeed, when the political winds have been favourable the Dutch have been among the more enthusiastic members. Two EU treaties—Amsterdam and Maastricht—bear the names of the Dutch cities in which they were signed. The uppermost ranks of EU policymaking are dotted with Dutchmen, from Jeroen Dijsselbloem, head of the Eurogroup of finance ministers, to Frans Timmermans, first vice-president of the European Commission.

But two things seem to have turned the Dutch. The first was a growing gap over Europe between ordinary voters and the cosy elites who have traditionally run the show: in 2005 many politicians were shocked when over 60% of voters rejected a proposed EU constitution in a referendum. (Mr Wilders continues to mine this anti-elitist seam.) The second was the discovery that not every European country can uphold its duties as responsibly as the Dutch—and that in an increasingly integrated club, a failure to behave in a Dutch fashion has painful consequences for others.

Dutch patience has been tested on two counts. First, badly run economies in the euro-zone’s periphery have obliged the Netherlands to pay for half a dozen bail-outs (for which they have insisted on extremely tough conditions). Second, over 50,000 asylum-seekers made their way to the Netherlands in 2015, waved through by negligent Mediterranean countries that fail to register migrants properly. This influx, noteworthy if much smaller than the ones that reached Germany or Sweden, has even led some Dutch politicians to call for a revision of the 1951 Refugee Convention, the cornerstone of global asylum law.

The Dutch approach should not be mistaken for an ideological reluctance to integrate. It is rather the frustration of the small, rich country that follows the rules and cannot abide those that don’t. Rather than walk away from the club, the Dutch want it to work better. From here spring ideas like a shrunken “neuro”, a currency shared by responsible northern Europeans shorn of southern fecklessness, or a “mini-Schengen”, an idea floated by Mr Dijsselbloem in which the current 26 members are reduced to a rump of five: the three Benelux countries plus Germany and Austria. Neither proposal was ever likely to pass. The hope was that they might spook other countries into shaping up.

Euroscepticism with Dutch characteristics

Two lessons can be drawn from the Dutch experience. The first is that the nasty brand of populism represented by Mr Wilders is here to stay, and not only in the Netherlands. It will poison public debate, complicate efforts to manage the migrant crisis and cause headaches for politicians trying to assemble governments. Such is the tortured terrain of European politics these days.

But there is a second lesson that may act as a mild corrective to Euro-gloom. As border controls pop up across Europe, Schengen looks gravely imperilled. Yet the wealth and dynamism of the Dutch economy show the value of an open-border regime in an integrated continental club. The Netherlands will not be alone in battling for its future. Today’s border checks are troublesome but manageable. But Europeans will not tolerate complete border closures or 50-mile traffic jams. Charlemagne therefore ventures a prediction: forecasts of Schengen’s imminent collapse will prove no more accurate than those of the demise of the euro zone so often heard in 2011-12.