{"id":2980,"date":"2026-06-10T16:00:00","date_gmt":"2026-06-10T14:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tpusa-netherlands.com\/?p=2980"},"modified":"2026-06-10T12:55:52","modified_gmt":"2026-06-10T10:55:52","slug":"democratie-buiten-het-boekje","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tpusa-netherlands.com\/en\/democratie-buiten-het-boekje\/","title":{"rendered":"Democratic overreach"},"content":{"rendered":"

Democratic overreach<\/p>Last November I published<\/a> an analysis regarding the far-reaching interpretation of the \u2018free movement of people\u2019 by the European Court of Justice. This verdict followed a civil suit in Poland about gay marriage.<\/a>. <\/cite><\/blockquote><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The Court established that the Polish state was required to grant rights to a marriage pronounced in another Schengen country equal to a Polish marriage, regardless of whether such a marriage would be lawful in Poland itself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For the Polish government this created a politically impossible scenario. Executing this ECJ ruling would result in incredible backlash inside Poland. Not executing this verdict would equally so. Not only would premier Tusk risk a presidential veto, inside the governing coalition, as well as within the Polish population at large this remains a hugely polarising subject.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The lure of power<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

Apart from this single instance of a court ruling, something far more universal is at play that has troubled governments since the first establishment of civilisation. Power is always addictive, and an addict always wants more. No matter how a government is ordered, there is always one group within a country that finds its way to power the easiest. Given enough time this group will inevitably manage to change the existing power structures to their benefit, leading to an increase in their own power. Democracies are not exempt from this. Even more so, democracies are exceptionally vulnerable to these influences, since people are mostly unaware of the patterns operating beneath the surface. Authoritarian regimes must always account for the repressed part of the populace. If they are repressed too much, rebellion will ensue and topple the regime. This authoritarian check valve is completely absent in democracies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Like the Classical Greek philosopher Aristotle (384-322 BC) explained in his Politica<\/em> , the three main categories of state structure, \u2018democracy\u2019, \u2018oligarchy\u2019 and \u2018tyranny\u2019 are all vulnerable in specific ways due to one principal flaw: a human being always thinks from the basis of his own self-interest. In a stable parliamentary democracy, the risks of a \u2018tyranny of the majority\u2019 are ever present. For how will you make yourself unique when you always win elections? How can you show the merit of your manifesto when all your plans have already been baked into law? How can you still reach the voter when you are identical to the status quo? More often than not extremism is the only answer for this.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Of course, this doesn\u2019t happen from one day to the next. Revolutionary independence fighters like Robert Mugabe have shown us as much. Once you finally have a peaceful, stable country, and have been ruling for ten years, it is terrifying to relinquish that power and allow for a free democratic process. Who will fill those shoes, once you depart? What if he breaks down what you have spent years building up? And then you are in power for twenty, thirty years. Generations have grown up with you as their leader, knowing nothing better, but still desiring better. The usual answer is then repression. Because you, as their supreme leader, still know what the chaos felt like. Then you rule for forty years, and you start feeling your age. Your principles and ideals have long since been forgotten and you feel the hatred across the land. What do you do then? Will you let the chaos loose, and surrender everything you spent your whole life to achieve? Or will you strike back, no longer hindered by ideals of freedom and justice after so many compromises eroded them into something unrecognisable?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Netherlands<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

By now it may seem like we have drifted far from the subject at hand, but don\u2019t be fooled. Where these trends are very easy to pinpoint in a revolutionary-later-authoritarian regime, the same principles work within democracies. It just happens much more subtly. That does not mean that people actively work to destroy a democracy from within. Many democracies have built in check valves to prevent these abuses, but none are perfect. On the contrary, the example from the start is the result of an activist charge for equality and justice. The blurry edges of the relevant treaties were sought out to achieve something good, from a certain point of view. But within a democracy, especially a layered democracy like in Europe, two things always play a role. Firstly, that the people always desire their interests to be served. They want to feel being listened to. They want to experience a part of the power that they learnt in school they have a right to in a democracy. Secondly, the representatives (politicians) want to show the people that they are the ones to effectively and reliably serve those interests. After all, within a democratic framework, that is their whole reason for being.<\/p>\n\n\n

\"Democratie<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n

These two points clash when multiple democratic layers are combined in the same system. How will you maintain a profile in a municipality when all your plans and ambitions are national? The same holds true the other way around. Municipalities may disagree about the number of asylum seekers they are required to house, but they still must adhere to the law. The national assembly can fume about shop opening times on Sundays, but this remains a local issue, outside their jurisdiction. Yet, more and more we see how these borders are questioned, or outright broken, so representatives (on every level) can show profile to both their voters and increase their voting potential.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The European Union<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

The European Union functions in a special grey area. While the mandates of municipalities, provinces, security boards, water boards and the national government have all been rather well established, the EU mandate is not. Several treaties clearly state where the EU does not have a mandate (national security and military, crime, healthcare, etc.). Others grant the EU full mandate (monetary policy and trade etc.). A huge portion of policies areas are unaccounted for and let Brussels operate in a form of limbo. If heads of state, the European Commission and the European Parliament agree about something, they are practically capable of extending their mandate as long as they do not cross the prohibitions specifically written down in the EU\u2019s foundational treaties.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What currently happens in Brussels and Strasbourg is that certain topics long considered outside the EU mandate, are being discussed. This may be a subtle extension of the mandate, like the founding of Frontex or the prohibition against pulse fishing but increasingly deals with completely different policy areas. MEP\u2019s want to show to their voters that Brussels has power to get things done and want to show that they are the ones able to effectively wield that power. For example, a non-binding vote was held declaring abortion a human right, and certain votes were held calling for different states to break off certain diplomatic ties.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The problem of the European Union is that the treaties of Maastricht and Lisbon are more akin to a list of shared principles than an actual constitution. They tried implementing a constitution but was shut down after a \u2018no\u2019 vote from The Netherlands and France in 2005. This was a very deliberate \u2018no\u2019, since this constitution would grant too much power and autonomy to Brussels according to the Dutch and French. Now we find ourselves in a position where we need to deal with the unintentional side effects of this rejection. The lack of a judicial framework demarking the policy width of the European Union leads to a situation where member states are confronted with regulations that are unexplainable and unsupportable in the internal politics of the member state. The Polish case is exemplary for this. Even though the ECJ operates outside the EU structures, the exact same patterns play out here. Another example is the discussion around covering financial aid to Ukraine. Two choices were presented: using Russian frozen assets (absolutely unacceptable to Belgium, since most of the assets are in Belgium and the Belgian government cannot bear that risk alone), and communal debt (the so-called Eurobonds, absolutely unacceptable to Germany and The Netherlands). Whichever choice was made, countries were placed in a position that was for their internal politics indefensible.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Know thy place<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

For a democracy to be able to function well, the borders and limitations of the mandates must be well-defined for every level of the democratic structure. That means that The Hague does not have any say in the opening hours of a village shop, Luxembourg does not determine how Poland registers a foreign marriage, and city councils and university boards have nothing to do with foreign diplomacy or embargoes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Like Aristotle tried to warn all his readers, is that one should not be blind to the defects inherent to a democratic system. Many people will be momentarily happy when a politician applies to their sense of validation, but everyone will be better off when these matters are discussed at the correct level. Legislation that makes EU-guidelines supersede national laws are a direct devaluation of a country\u2019s sovereignty. The EU was founded as a financial and economic powerhouse, enabling Europe to operate in a globalised world, and enabling them to balance out the economic pressures from the PRC, the USA and the Russian Federation. And that works as intended. The whole legislative process in Brussels is so incredibly slow because it is built to carefully and precisely steer macro-economic policy. The unified Europe vision beneath that apparatus was always there but has been successfully and consistently tempered by several member states. Is maintaining this opposition any longer even possible?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Within a civilization, the government bears the sword and took upon itself the tasks that an individual cannot bear. The relationship between an individual and the government is complex and often lacks trust, and this goes both ways. Still, we are called, throughout all conflicts, to put our faith and trust in a different King. The apostle Peter summarises it for us in his epistle: \u201cHonor all men. Love the brotherhood. Fear God. Honor the king.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

Auteur: Raoul Michels<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

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vacatures<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Democratie buiten het boekje Afgelopen november schreef ik een analyse over de verregaande interpretatie van het \u2018vrij verkeer van personen\u2019 door het Europees Hof van Justitie naar aanleiding van een rechtszaak in Polen over het homohuwelijk. Het Hof oordeelde dat de Poolse staat een legitiem in een ander Schengenland legitiem gesloten huwelijk dezelfde rechten moet […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2981,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[78],"tags":[36,76,40,39],"class_list":["post-2980","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-beleid-maatschappelijke-analyse","tag-raoul-michels","tag-tp-journal","tag-turning-point","tag-turning-point-journal"],"blocksy_meta":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tpusa-netherlands.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2980","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tpusa-netherlands.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tpusa-netherlands.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tpusa-netherlands.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tpusa-netherlands.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2980"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/tpusa-netherlands.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2980\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2985,"href":"https:\/\/tpusa-netherlands.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2980\/revisions\/2985"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tpusa-netherlands.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2981"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tpusa-netherlands.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2980"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tpusa-netherlands.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2980"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tpusa-netherlands.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2980"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}