If Europe really want to thrive in the 21st century non-Western world, we need to take some bold steps in the next five to ten years. The Commission and other EU institutes should first focus on consolidation and fixing the economy, as described in the previous chapter. What follows next must be a new Treaty for the European Union, that could see the light in 2020.
Negotiations on this Treaty can start around 2018. Much depends on the speed of recovery of the EU and the eurozone specifically. No less crucial is the question of whether the United Kingdom will decide to stay in the Union – if the announced referendum for 2017 goes ahead. The UK is a frontrunner in the tension between the EU and the member states. A ‘Brexit’ will undermine the EU considerably and ignite a Europe-wide feeling that the game is over. But if they stay, we could overcome the rifts and work more rigorously on the fragmentation that is taking place within the EU.
Many of the British concerns are grossly exaggerated and emotional. They worry about uncontrolled immigration of poor migrants, while Britons themselves flock to southern Europe to retire there, increasing the pressure on local health services. The UK is against more rules on the single market, but it actually profits from that same market immensely. And while it has opted to stay out of the eurozone, it is now complaining that it cannot influence the fiscal rules of that same eurozone.
But Great Britain also has some valid points. The unease with the notion of an ‘ever closer Union’ is to be taken seriously, as national democracy is continuously being hollowed out by the ongoing European integration process. Not all countries want to move forward so strongly, so the EU has to find a way to accommodate different integration paths. Within Europe, we can identify stark differences in views on economic policies: the UK wants a laissez-faire policy while southern Europe wants a more centralised approach including protectionism, and Germany thinks that the whole of Europe should become like them. Pushing all member states into a single economic model will only create more tension and friction, rather than convergence and progress.
But a two-speed Europe is not without risks. The division between a eurozone and a non-eurozone within the EU is already leading to fragmentation and a blurring of what the EU is about. “What we see is that the 18 eurozone countries have taken a lot of steps to build new institutions and new frameworks that basically transfer sovereignty from the national to the European level,” says Korteweg. “That leaves the non-euro countries to the side. From their perspective, from the UK’s perspective, integration might actually mean fragmentation. It looks like their national interests are no better protected.”
The next Commission can handle several of these discomforts, for instance by relaxing the European Semester. But to really settle this fundamental problem of diverse views within the EU, the whole system needs to be overhauled. Hence the necessity of a new Treaty that should embody a new vision on European integration.
The Treaty for Next Europe should start with some basic principles and an appealing narrative. We need to bring back old-fashioned idealism, instead of technocratic governance analyses, into the future of Europe debate. This is the only way to find the right answers for the big questions that Europe faces. We need to go back to the core and the soul of Europe to find our future path. Such big words are unavoidable because we have found ourselves in the midst of an adjustment battle to reshape our 20th century continent for a 21st century environment. Lifestyles have to be adjusted, international cooperation has to be increased. But all these steps are worthless if we keep reiterating that the European Union is necessary to survive. That means Europe is like a must-do. And people don’t like lifejackets and seatbelts, let alone love them.
I believe in Europe. Europeans have much more in common than they realise. We have a shared history and culture that is rich, diverse and priceless. Apart from all the good reasons to integrate further, the European Union needs to get the people of Europe closer to each other. Not so much the nation-states or our economies. It is, as Schuman rightly said, about putting man at the centre. Our relentless focus on economic integration and forcing weaker countries to reform, has put this goal of the project to the background. Centralisation has only led to more division and to a weakening of Europe’s soul.
Too much ambition and a Great Leap Forward for the EU isn’t wise, either. We should no longer strive for a United States of Europe. We missed that opportunity with the mishandling of the eurocrisis, and now it is time to choose a different approach. We are also overshooting on enlargement and underperforming on keeping people on board.
Further integration makes sense, but can also lead to alienating people, and even whole countries. How to deal with this dilemma is an urgent, but also perennial, problem for the EU. There is a need for stronger European democracy, but hardly anyone knows who is in the European Parliament, follows what happens in the EP, or understands the difference between the European Council and the Council of Europe. It will take one or two generations before the nascent European political and public sphere brings forth pan-European parties and media.
This is why the best choice is a mix of further integration and renationalisation of Europe’s policies at the same time. The mantra of an ever-closer Union should be scrapped and enlargement limited; European democracy has to be organised along national lines; several policy fields need to be given back to the member states. This all sounds quite defensive, but there is a prize for the ardent pro-Europeans. We can integrate much further in the economic area, harmonise our 28 welfare states, Europeanise defence and foreign policies and even create a common budget. This is the right balance that can, and should, be struck to get Europe ready for the future.
A narrative on Europe that strikes a chord from Ireland to Greece, has to be the opening text of the Treaty for Next Europe. It should not focus so much on peace and prosperity (the 20th century motive), but rather on the European way of life and our values. Equality and solidarity, the fundamental underpinnings of our welfare state model, are central in this motive. Trust, cooperation and openness are other crucial values. Holslag: “Europe should have an ambitious vision for lifting the market up to a higher level. I really don’t think the solution is more rules or more bureaucracy, but I do believe that we should have standards that allow our companies to create growth and jobs, without having the fear being washed away by credit-supported imports from China, and polluted shale gas imported from the US. It is essential that we raise the playing field and that should be supported by pursuing new grand alliances between enterprises and the people.”
Another part of the narrative should reflect on Europe’s soul and the deeper background of why we are doing this. Gabriël van den Brink explains the need for philosophy: “The European debate is always about two subjects: the market and power. It is almost never about the meaning of Europe in the societal imagination, the cultural dimension of our continent, our relation to its history, the values that are sacred to us, or the moral and philosophical principles that justify the project. Many leaders think that mobilisation of citizens happens through raising interests. They continue to praise the economic advantages of European integration. And do not dare to question the cultural differences on the continent.” That focus on the market leads to all kinds of cleavages in Europe, argues Van den Brink, including cultural differences and a further distance between authorities and citizens. He too pleads for dropping the notion of European integration as “an unstoppable process or an unavoidable development”.
The challenge is to engage Europeans about this new narrative before it is written. This year the Commission has published such a Leitmotiv, but it was written by a small group of intellectuals and elitists. Instead, we should co-create such a binding story on the future of Europe, engaging ordinary Europeans across the continent.
Listening to citizens is crucial. The 19th century approach of nation-building is no longer feasible. National identities are further structured and now ring fenced. The information monopoly has evaporated and creating an imagined community has to be done on a different way. More importantly, people can no longer be forced to accept decisions from the top. “For a more encompassing community one has to take the national culture as a starting point,” says Van den Brink.
So what should be the central task of the European Union? Whether we like it or not, economic integration is the spearhead of the project. To thrive as a continent, we have to invest much more in our economic cooperation. This is the field in which Europe’s leader must make some daring choices, while also giving back several competences to the member states. We have to extend the economic integration to the domain of the welfare state. This is the key to connecting Europe’s concept of solidarity and ‘man at the centre’ to the more market-driven reasons for economic cooperation.
The Treaty for Next Europe sets up the legal base for a complete single market. This is the essential foundation for renewed growth of Europe’s economy. It is also a necessary step to converge our economies and decrease the rifts that emerged after the eurocrisis. Because the next Commission probably cannot complete the digital, energy and service markets within Europe, work will still need to be done when we start the Treaty negotiations in 2018.
The current competitiveness divide within the EU is bad. Not only does it decrease the functioning of the bloc, it also leads to enormous social and political tensions. It supports the thought that we should all become Germans. But that is not the solution. The internal market should breathe naturally and in a varied way. Many companies in Portugal and Italy have decided to focus on high-quality products like leather bags, instead of competing for the lowest price as many German businesses do. That is a good division of labour.
Natural breathing of an economy requires that people within the system flow much freer than now is the case. We cannot do much about the reason to stay close at home because that is where your friends and family live. But Europe’s internal labour mobility can be increased dramatically if we harmonise our labour and other social laws, combined with reforming our education systems to create an internationally employable labour force. Pension rights, unemployment benefits and access to healthcare should become much more harmonised.
Social policies are incredibly sensitive stuff as they touch upon the heart of the nation-state. But this harmonising process is already well under way as the functioning of the internal market is hampered by having 28 different welfare state regimes. Since the introduction of the euro, Europe’s influence on education, pension and labour laws as well as healthcare has increased insidiously. Sometimes this is stimulated by the market, for instance by insurance companies lobbying for stricter rules for pension funds, who are their main competitors, but the European Parliament has also spoken about making social rights portable.
Another way of bridging the gaps within the EU is by introducing eurobonds. They make so much sense as the eurozone will only integrate further. Shared governments bonds are a logical building block. To take away the moral hazard and free-rider problems, member states with a lesser track record get a surcharge on their eurobonds.
A huge economic problem is that Europe hasn’t created many big companies that can deliver growth and jobs in recent decades. Europe clearly lacks an ‘ecosystem’ that supports entrepreneurship and needs to foster one as soon as possible. Small and medium sized enterprises struggle to grow and benefit from the single market. Therefore the rising class of entrepreneurs has to be accommodated at home instead of allowing them to leave for more business-friendly environments like the United States and China. You don’t have to lay this ambition down in the Treaty for Next Europe, but it should be an important note to keep in mind when redrawing the internal market.
A similar challenge is the job revolution as predicted by The Economist and many others. If half of the current jobs have disappeared by 2030, how can we possibly prepare? Flexibilisation of our system is one key element, for instance by freeing up the labour market and supporting freelancers with tax incentives. Investments in lifelong learning is another. Youngsters who leave school or university now, may expect several big turns in their career and they have to be able to ‘reinvent themselves’ time and time again.
As our labour population is declining and the bulge of greying ‘baby boomers’ growing, Europe needs an active immigration policy. Increasing the pension age, getting women to work more and boosting labour production will only be temporary measures; Europe’s workforce will shrink by around 10% in the coming ten years. The current blue card system is not without flaws and focuses too much on high-skilled workers. A new version of the blue card has to appeal to a larger audience of aspirant migrants.
We should not wait too long to open our borders for labour, as the global competition for the right workers has already taken off. The United States, Canada, Australia, South Korea and Switzerland are attracting all kinds of workers with easy-to-get work permits and job packages.
A big barrier will of course be Europe’s mindset towards migration. We have an exclusive instead of an inclusive culture, distrust outsiders including other Europeans. As long as the citizens reject a real opening up of our societies, blue card schemes and other immigration policies are bound to fail.
The evergreen of more investments in education, research and innovation remains valid. Europe is lagging behind compared to other advanced economies, when it comes to investments in R&D and education levels. What the EU can do is prop up its funds for innovation policies and digital communications networks. Sadly in the last multi-annual budget negotiations, these essential funds were either capped or slashed, to keep Europe’s money flowing to subsidies for farmers and highways. Another complicating factor is that the EU cannot do much about national spending on research and development, either by the private or the public sector. It has to approach the issue in the ‘coalition-governance style’ like the Commission tried with the aforementioned Grand Coalition for Digital Jobs, rather than enforcing it top-down through rules and targets.
“Some of the things the EU does are sheer madness: structural funds and agricultural policies in general. Over the years we made some insanely bad choices.” This isn’t a think-tanker or a politician speaking, but a top EU official. According to him the Union can certainly extend its powers, but should be ready to give back as well. “There is no way to circumvent a reorientation of the relationship between the EU and the member states. We need a much clearer definition of what Brussels does and what happens at a national and local level. Ambiguity in this respect is the last thing we want. Citizens get more insecure and are fearful of a loss of national identity.”
The balance between the EU and the nation-states has become very unclear, especially after the emergency measures of the eurocrisis. So the eurocrat is right, we need a ‘cull list’ of European policies that should be given back to the member states. This is partly a gesture, as the bulk of the European influence stems from its very core: the single market and the eurozone. But the rebalancing act also targets policies that are past their prime and should be put to sleep.
The cull list includes agricultural policies, regional and structural funds as well as parts of environmental policy. The EU spends one-third of its budget on agricultural subsidies, a sector that is now in the margins of Europe’s economy with a contribution of 1.6% to the GDP and employing 5% of the labour population. Only the richer member states, with France in first place, really benefit from the Union’s support for farmers. The money flows distort the global food distribution as Europeans are basically subsidising food production and dumping overproduced stock on the global market. Larger companies profit disproportionately from agricultural funds, as well as rich families with large estates.
Structural funds are meant to boost the development of poorer regions, but are often mishandled and influenced by successful lobbying by (richer) countries. Various academic research projects on these funds – worth hundreds of billions of euros during a Commission’s term – have resulted in little positive impact. The poorest regions have trouble absorbing the money so miss it altogether. In countries like Spain beautiful airports and roads have been built with the structural funds, but they are not accompanied by progress.
As the European Union has evolved into a highly political, supranational organisation, it cannot survive without a real democratic representation. The current system with the EP, Council and Commission clearly doesn’t work properly, leading to messy compromises all the time. Nor is the current process of EU legislation-making and representation understandable for most Europeans. If America organises democracy with 320 million people and India with almost 1.3 billion people, so can we. “Both countries have their issues and are not perfect, but they organise democracy at this level,” says Jan Techau. “The size is not the issue here, the system is.”
During the last elections in May 2014, it was noted many times that the more powers were given to the European Parliament, the less interested people were in it. At the first elections in 1979 almost seven in ten voters showed up (also because of mandatory voting in several member states in that time). The turnout in the 2014 was only 43%. You would expect with the extra powers gained through the Lisbon Treaty, and the widespread anger over the mishandling of the eurocrisis, that voters would express this anger through the ballot box. One in three voters did that by voting for an anti-European or anti-establishment party, but the majority of the voters stayed at home.
We cannot repair all the flaws of Europe’s democracy. The European political sphere develops only slowly, a proper European ‘demos’ is missing, the Commission will never become a government and the European Parliament will never get a budget that’s comparable to a national one (around 50% GDP in most member states). But with the Treaty for Next Europe, we could make the system more attractive and sexy, increase the connection between the member states and the EU. Plus, voters would be able to trash parties and politicians they don’t like. “What’s missing is two primordial features of democracy: accountability and representation,” writes Joseph Weiler, president of the European University Institute.
A different European democracy is constructed with the following elements.
First of all we have to reintroduce the ‘double mandate’, which was the original system of the European Parliament. That means that politicians take a seat both in their national and European assembly. A double mandate enforces the national political lines while at the same time it decreases the distance between parliamentarians and their constituency.
Opponents will say that this is impossible and unfeasible. First of all because the EP is here to represent the interest of Europeans, not of member states. Secondly the politicians will be overwhelmed by the amount of work. “It means they have to vote twice a week, in The Hague and in Brussels,” wrote one political journalist on Twitter during a discussion on the double mandate.
These worries are exaggerated. During the recent election campaign, there were hardly any aspiring Members of European Parliament (MEPs) who laid down a purely European vision. Time and time again, they would reiterate points that had to do with national interests, like Dutch politicians promising to stop giving loans to the Greeks. Within the political groups of the European Parliament, voting discipline is limited compared to national parliaments. Further on, by limiting voting rounds or introducing voting by distance – it is the 21st century – you can happily combine the work in two parliaments. It would also force politicians to pick priorities instead of trying to deal with everything that happens in the economy and society.
Another big advantage of the double mandate is that it will tie the national parliaments to the EU. As an outcome of the failure of the Constitutional Treaty of 2005, controlling mechanisms were introduced to enable national parliaments to halt a galloping Commission. ‘Subsidiarity and proportionality’ of EU laws are important principles to safeguard the balance between national and European laws. Basically they mean that rules should be formulated as locally as possible. Only if there is a pan-European added value, like in the case of environment laws, can the rules be enforced on the whole EU.
National parliaments have a tool to preserve their authority: the so-called yellow/orange card procedure. If a third of the parliaments think a proposal by the Commission should be reviewed, it has to do that. If half of the parliaments play the orange card, the European Council or the EP can vote the law down immediately. This emergency-brake system sounds clever, but it has only been used a couple of times in recent years. And on the big topics like the banking union, the influence of national parliaments is close to zero.
What is even more worrying is that the current level of knowledge and interest in many parliaments and political parties for the EU is extremely low. Only a handful of the Dutch members of parliament know anything about the EU. After a recent work visit to Brussels, a Dutch politician acknowledged the importance of the EU for his policy area. But he was honest enough to acknowledge that he wouldn’t do anything with it. “I can’t score at home by achieving results in Brussels,” he said.
Next to the double mandate, the work of the European Parliament will change dramatically, too. It has to, because it needs drama, action. It must throw the scoundrels out and become sexy and personalised. Eurocrats will abhor these words, as they predict a more popularised, emotional and hype-charged EP. That is exactly what is needed. Right now it is a very technocratic body. “The ‘rasp of technical details is incredible, but it lacks theatre,” says Giles Merritt.
To invigorate the EP, Merritt wants people to “rat on each other” and pick up on Commissioners who don’t deliver. This is excellent. Think live questionings of Commissioners like in the UK, sending individual Commissioners home if they don’t deliver, emergency debates when things go wrong, having the right to introduce laws. More dynamism and bad news is absolutely essential to attract the attention of people. Right now, the EU mainly wants to bring good news, but politics is about bad news, argues Merritt.
Of course, there should only be one seat of this new European Parliament: in Brussels. It is completely absurd that the French government refuses to let go of Strasbourg while the rest of Europe – even France’s own MEPs – want to stop the monthly circus. Strasbourg also acts like a poison on the legitimacy of the European Union. It costs money (people don’t like that) and MEPs keep complaining tremendously about it (which is self-defeating).
Another way of invigorating Europe’s politics is by direct election of the Commissioners, instead of appointing them by their government. There are several disadvantages to this system. With nationally elected Commissioners, the Commission could be seen as a body to preserve national rather than European interests. It would raise difficulty of accountability: why should the European Parliament judge over a nationally elected person? And we would still have 28 Commissioners, which is too many.
But consider the advantages. In each member state, you would get a set of public persons fighting for the vote to become Commissioner. He or she would have to come up with an appealing program for European policies. The whole process would be politicised, leading to clear political and ideological choices of what is on the table. And once chosen, the Commissioner will have a national mandate to act and be ‘our man/woman’ in Brussels.
The half-baked procedure that we now have, in which the largest political groups of the EP can push forward ‘top candidates’ for the Commission Presidency, is a democratic disaster. It just leads to more backroom deals and a messier system. The president of the Commission hardly has any powers to decide on the course and the program of the EU. That is still up to the member states, in a complicated conjunction with the EP. ‘Voting’ for a president that cannot form his own Commission or his program, is nothing but misleading and deceiving the audience. In the end the member states decide among themselves the course of the project.
An deeper-lying reason for nationalising European politics is the hollowing out of the national state. Because of globalisation, European integration and the IT revolution, democracies have quickly been turned into powerless states. Capitals can no longer ‘steer’ the economy or society, their central position within the country has evaporated. Recent elections in crisis-ridden countries have seen the old government thrown out, replaced by a different political grouping, that would then continue with the same old program. The EU is partly to blame with its austerity policies, but market forces and trends like ageing and self-organisation of people are also responsible for this loss of influence of national governments.
If we introduce more Europe at the heart of national democracies, we may actually reinvigorate these. People will get the feeling back of having actual influence on decisions made on their behalf. National political parties will integrate European policies in their systems and culture.
More powers for the European Parliament on fields like socio-economic terrain, economic governance and foreign policy will strengthen attention as well. What would further help is a proper European budget, raised through European taxes of around 10% of GDP. Of course, setting the pension age in the EU from Brussels instead of in the capitals is a further breach of sovereignty. But it will certainly politicise the EP much further and make reporting much easier, because discussions in the EP will get less technical.
The whole structure of the European Union should get simpler as well. Right now the mix of intergovernmentalism and communitarianism is unsustainable. It works from a governance point of view, but is hardly understandable if you are not a diplomat, academic or eurocrat. The political and decision process of the European Union must become a lot more accessible to prevent the imminent fallout of citizens and even national politicians.
Federalising the whole thing would be the easiest step, but that’s not conceivable. Nor is dismantling the EP. So the smart solution is to continue European integration via the national route, on a limited number of policy fields.
The Commission and the Council will have to be changed as a result of this process. In some areas like the single market, a centralised approach remains crucial, as a level playing field can only be accomplished if we use the same rules and standards across the EU. But not every policy has to be rules-based. Just as we saw earlier in the successful ‘Grand Coalition for Digital Jobs’, the Commission can position itself more as a broker and network organisation than a top-down player. In the networked society, such a governance style makes sense: on the local, national and European level. Brussels sets the frames and guidelines, finds the right partners and supports with money, knowledge and infrastructure. The 21st century is full of problems that cannot be solved by throwing money at them. Rather we have to create ad-hoc coalitions and public-private partnerships to deal with these challenges.
With the importance of cities and urban regions only growing, this is also the best strategy to give the mayors of Europe the possibility of working together to solve issues at the local level close to the citizens. As these new perspectives on governance are evolving at high speed, it’s better not to go in-depth on them. By the time the Treaty negotiations start, they may well have gained importance. Until then the ‘eurocrats’ should continue experimenting and making mistakes. And not only with coalitions, but also with co-creating and crowdsourcing new legislation. They should also improve the use of open data like the Americans, Estonians and Norwegians do, and even try to crowdfund European projects.
The European Council and the machinery behind it (thousands of diplomats and policy officers) can stay intact. Foreign policy, social security and taxation should be areas that the Council can vote on by qualified majorities.
To prevent the Ring of Fire from burning down Europe – to put it dramatically – we have to step up our investments in, and cooperation with, the region around us. There have been many failed efforts in the past, like the initiative of an Union for the Mediterranean by French President Sarkozy. This Union is part of Europe’s Neighbourhood Policy (ENP) which clearly hasn’t gone anywhere with Ukraine, Syria and Egypt going up in flames and civic turmoil.
The ENP focuses on closing Association Agreements: in exchange for tariff-free access to part of Europe’s markets, countries sign up for political and economic reform. Since its launch in 2004, billions of euros have been pumped into countries in the Middle East as well as in Eastern Europe. The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development has lent money to several countries under the ENP programme.
Problems abound for this strategy. The EU has taken a strong top-down approach and is pushing through a eurocentric vision, rather than choosing a real partnership. Stefan Lehne from Carnegie Europe points out another flaw: “The policy overemphasises bilateral relationships, overlooking the fact that many of the neighbourhood’s problems require a regional approach.”
It is necessary to reset the strategy and increase Europe’s engagement with our neighbourhood. This is why I propose an initiative for a ‘Greater European Region Network’ (GERN) that comprises trade liberalisation, cooperation in governance, exchange of students and academics, and investments in digital and communication networks. Fostering regional cooperation is crucial, as current strategy is too much focused on bilateral assistance. The GERN could also start education institutions in participating states, to give classes in entrepreneurship and train youngsters for a career in healthcare, which would relieve Europe’s need for nurses and doctors in the ageing future.
The ultimate ‘prize’ of joining to the GERN, is gaining the status of European Economic Area (EEA) member. That status gives the countries full access to the EU’s single market. Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway are EEA members, Switzerland has a similar construction with the EU. In this way Ukraine, Turkey, Lebanon, Tunisia and other states in the Ring of Fire have a clear, unambiguous goal in sight: join the Ring of Prosperity and avoid the turmoil that is around them.
It is a cliché to say that Europe should speak with one voice in the world. It absolutely makes sense, but it rarely happens because national interests still prevail. “The EU has 28 national foreign services that are unlikely to give up their competences anytime soon,” writes the Dutch researcher Erwin van Veen. “In addition, the military strategies, capabilities and foreign policy priorities of many of the EU’s members differ so substantially for historic, geographic and political reasons that offensive military operations under EU flag are, simply, fantasies of imagination.”
With all the upheaval expected in the world, it is time to start fantasising seriously about a European foreign policy – even though the chances of realising are slim. The increasing trade between single EU member states and non-EU countries and regions doesn’t help either. It only increases the national interests that member states have outside Europe.
By 2020, we could break through this train of thought. Several severe crises will have taken place at Europe’s borders, we may have suffered from terrorist attacks, or trade routes that have been disrupted because of military conflict in East Asia. All these events will undoubtedly lead to a recognition of Europe speaking – and acting – with one voice.
Therefore the European External Action Service (EEAS) should get more tasks, responsibilities, money and military capabilities. In a number of foreign policy areas like trade, aid, defence and human rights, the EEAS has an exclusive competence. Of course, this implies that the foreign ministries of the member states will be hollowed out and the national armies can close their gates. It is better that the ministries start sending a large part of their corps diplomatique to Brussels to work for the EEAS, and then be sent abroad to Europe’s embassies around the world.
The armies can still remain where they are, but they would be placed under one central command, with each member state specialising in a defence area such as marine, air power or military intelligence. This way we build on the historical roots and networks of both the foreign and defence ministries of the EU member states, instead of abolishing them. We can partly finance the European army with money directed from the Agriculture Funds.
Aid programmes must be harmonised, too. What is the added value of 28 different aid policies? In the Dutch foreign ministry, the knowledge base is fairly limited. Dutch diplomats are posted in ‘partner countries’ for only a few years and have to run big aid programs worth tens of millions of euros, while lacking a big network and deep knowledge of the country where they work. Because aid is such a complex matter and can easily do harm, for instance supporting power bases of corrupt leaders or prohibiting rather than promoting modernisation, it makes sense to group our efforts. The EU is, including the contributions of the member states, already the biggest aid donor in the world. Let’s centralise our policies drastically to really have an impact of €65 billion of taxpayers’ money.