The Low Countries. Jaargang 6

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All Quiet on the Royal Front
150 Years of Continuous Monarchy in the Netherlands

Queen Wilhelmina (1889-1948) (Photo anp).

Until the emergence of the Republican Society in 1996^1., the anti-monarchist movement in the Netherlands had for generations kept a very low profile. Leaving aside the drunken artist whose republican ideals were regularly to be seen chalked on building site hoardings in Amsterdam, the Dutch capital had for years been deserted by the revolutionaries who in the past had brightened up the city's streets. The political activists of the 1960s (New Left, Communists, pacifists and ‘provos’) have since ceased to exist or have applied for places in retirement homes. The artist Aat Veldhoen, too, who in the seventies regularly forced the Amsterdam police into action to remove his realistic royal nudes from advertising pillars and shop fronts, has long since hung his republican harp on the willow tree. Even the Office of Public Prosecutions takes things easy these days: the last time an unknown libeller was prosecuted for insulting the monarchy was twenty-five years ago, and

1. Founded by the ex-Chairman of the Board of Reed-Elsevier and the former professor Pierre Vinken, the former Queen's Commissioner in the Province of Dutch Limburg Dr Sjeng Cremers and the former Dutch Minister of Finance (1971-1972) and the former director of abn amro Bank Roelof Nelissen. The Society, which began as a lunch circle and chooses its own members, ‘has no articles, object or plans’. The founders, who ‘just happened to be sitting next to each other’, felt, according to the notification of the first meeting in June 1996, that the republican form of government was ‘the only large-scale Dutch taboo. (...) Politicians, from left to right, irrespective of the historical roots of their political programme, are Royalists almost without exception, or else dare not reveal themselves to be in the other camp. Against this background, the existence of the Republican Society is necessary; its existence is a weak but clear signal which may lead to reflection, particularly among the younger generations’.

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we have to go much further back in history to find a conviction for lesemajesty.

It was therefore high time that the republican lion began to roar again. But the Republican Society, a dinner-table collection of gentlemen whose aims are momentarily low-key (first lengthy intellectual reflection, and only then action), will have to bring all hands on deck if it is to gain any impetus. It will have to be fired mainly by its own inspiration rather than relying on cheering crowds if it is to get the republican show on the road. The monarchy debate in the Netherlands has been a dry well for too long.

Monarchy debates need the good fortune of a prince who now and again loses control of his souped-up motorbike, or is named in a bribery scandal. But incidents involving the monarchy are fairly thin on the ground: since the accession of Queen Beatrix, the present monarch, in 1980, there has been an acute shortage of royal questions.

Prior to that date, there was no lack of constitutional incidents or, for those who prefer, scandals. In 1964 Princess Irene, Beatrix' sister, married

Beatrix' accession to the throne in 1980 (Photo bp).

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Queen Juliana (1948-1980) and Beatrix (l.) (Photo bp).

the Spanish prince Hugo Carlos de Bourbon, for whom she not only gave up her hereditary right to the Dutch throne (she was second in line of succession), but also became a Roman Catholic. For half the Dutch population the latter act was at least as bad as the first, because the Dutch Oranges were Protestants through and through and since the time of William the Silent had stood in the breach to defend freedom of religion. The affair led to a short but fierce revival of antipapism in the Netherlands. The Princess lost her official status in the Netherlands because the government failed to ask parliament for its (constitutionally required) permission for her marriage, and she was in effect constitutionally demoted.

In 1965 the marriage of Princess Beatrix herself to the German diplomat Claus van Amsberg caused a great commotion among the Dutch, this time because the Dutch heir to the throne had chosen a German who had served as a soldier under Hitler. The future spouse of the later Queen turned out to be a ‘first-class’ German, however, who quickly won the hearts of the Dutch. But in the middle of the 1960s, when anti-German sentiment was still strongly felt in broad sections of the Dutch population, this could not be assumed in advance.

In 1976 Prince Bernhard, husband of Queen Juliana and father of Beatrix, was named in an investigation by an American Senate Committee in connection with the Lockheed scandal. It was said that he had accepted bribes from the American aircraft manufacturer in exchange for recommendations to the Dutch Minister of Defence. Proof was not forthcoming, but the circumstantial evidence against the Prince was so strong that the Dutch government dismissed him from all his official military posts. Since then, there have been no more such events to feed and nurture the formation of a republican movement.

It seems that the scandals at the Dutch court have been exhausted. And

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the republican cause needs scandals in order to keep the momentum going and sustain its courage. Twenty years after the Lockheed scandal which cost Prince Bernhard his military uniforms it can be said that the court of Queen Beatrix has become scandal-proof. It has modernised itself, but also depoliticised itself. The latter is partly due to a reduction in scale (the limitation of the number of members of the Royal Family) which the constitutional legislator felt was necessary in 1972 to trim the overly swelled Royal House, but is mainly a result of the internal discipline which Beatrix has introduced into her own family. As a consequence, since she ascended the throne no unconstitutional faux pas by members of the Royal House have been observed, nor have any other questionable transgressions which would have prompted ministerial intervention.

These changes have radically altered the tone of the news about the monarchy and the Royals at the palaces of Huis ten Bosch, Soestdijk and Het Loo. In fact, substantial news from those quarters has become a rarity. And that rarity has for some time influenced the reporting of the quality press. It is thought-provoking that newspapers such as NRC Handelsblad and de Volkskrant, which at the time of the Lockheed scandal led the way in levelling fundamental criticisms, today devote more attention to the Queen's couturiers - a subject which five years ago was wisely left to the ‘Royal-watcher’ press - than to the late-in-the-day reform of the nation's polity.

The result of all this is that the debate about the ending of the monarchy, which was pursued energetically in certain circles in the Netherlands in the

Queen Beatrix (1980-), painted by Sierk Schröder.

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sixties and seventies, has faded into insignificance, becoming something which no longer excites revolutionaries and hardly interests Socialists.

Most of the external and internal dangers which threatened the continuity of the Royal House in the past (radical opposition, internal profligacy) have virtually disappeared, with the result that the House of Orange, since 1814 the constitutional supplier of monarchs to the Dutch throne, has little cause for concern about its constitutional future. At the end of the twentieth century there appears to be little reason to support the - genuine or otherwise - pessimism with which Prince Bernhard once portrayed the situation of the monarchy in a united Europe.^2. The political unification of Europe is passing the monarchy by, in terms of both form and content, because it leaves the polity of individual member states unaltered. This almost complete calm on the monarchy front has pleasant political consequences for the government: with a few minor exceptions, such as royal hunting rights or the rare elevation to the nobility, the government can virtually ignore the monarchy from a political point of view.

Despite the comfortable calm which has characterised the government of Queen Beatrix over the last eighteen years, the importance of the monarchy has in no way declined. The monarchy under Beatrix is just as strongly linked to Dutch state life as it was under her mother and grandmother before her and the way things look at present there will be no change in the Dutch form of government in the near future, however far European unification may still progress and however much legislation is delegated to the European Commission. As a symbol of national identity the monarchy will undergo some shrinkage, but it will remain a symbol - unlike, for example, the Dutch Central Bank, that other symbol of outmoded national sovereignty. Because the arrival of Monetary Union means that annexation of the Dutch Central Bank to make it a ‘branch’ of the Bundesbank (and harnessing the guilder to the German mark) is probably unavoidable in the longer term. The Dutch monarchy, thanks to the lack of supranational European bodies with monarchic aspirations, need not fear such a demotion. The significance of state visits, with which the Netherlands is only too eager to continue exploiting the trade-promoting value of its monarchy, will not reduce, and as some countries are still charmed by Dutch trade delegations ‘as long as they come with a crown’^3., the Netherlands and the House of Orange will be able to keep their mutual balance of payments on a even keel.

This does not however mean that the monarchy is assured of immunity in domestic politics. The chance that the Queen will lose her traditional leading role in cabinet formation before long has increased with the ‘purple’ left-wing liberal majority in the Dutch Parliament. Indications of this can be found in an article by the mp T.C. de Graaf, chairman of the parliamentary party of the centre-left coalition partner D66, who in the autumn of 1997 - before becoming chairman - launched the official proposal in NRC Handelsblad that the monarch should in future be excluded from the cabinet formation process and that the cabinet should be formed under the auspices of a person designated by Parliament^4., a suggestion which had already been made by two advisory committees in the early 1980s. According to De Graaf, ministerial responsibility for forming the government is in dire need of strengthening. Under the present system the Queen, according to the mp, lacks the protection of full ministerial responsibility, and is forced to

2. In an interview with the author. See Harry van Wijnen, De Prins-Gemaal. Amsterdam, 1992.

3. An official who was involved in the preparations for the Dutch state visit to France, speaking to the author.

4. In NRC Handelsblad, 20 October 1997. De Graaf received support for his proposal from a section of the D66 party, which argued at the party's election conference in favour of a more far-reaching reduction of the role of the monarchy and of the immediate introduction of a monarchy along the lines of the ‘Swedish model’. The relevant amendment 407b to the D66 election programme read: ‘D66 supports the idea of a monarchy with purely ceremonial duties. Such a monarchy, based on the Swedish model, is the best translation of the symbolic function which is the most important reason for the continued existence of the monarchy. The exercising of real constitutional powers by a hereditary head of state, such as the appointment of the cabinet formation officer and the co-signing of laws and decrees, does not in the view of D66 have a place in a full and mature democracy.’ The amendment did not make it to the election manifesto, however, though support for De Graaf's proposal was sufficiently widespread to ensure that it will undoubtedly become a parliamentary issue.

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make choices which could lead to criticism regarding her political neutrality. This would raise questions about the person of the head of state, thus infringing the constitutional rule that the monarch is inviolable. As an example, in 1973 the vvd (right-wing liberal) senator Harm van Riel accused Queen Juliana of having a personal preference for the PvdA (labour party) during the formation of what ultimately became the centre-left Den Uyl cabinet. This accusation illustrates the precarious situation in which the Dutch Queen, who officially plays a refereeing role in the formation of governments and who is traditionally neutral, has to operate in an over-full political arena. And during the laborious cabinet formation process in the summer of 1994, the cda (Christian Democrats) felt excluded by a presumed personal preference on the part of Queen Beatrix for the so-called ‘purple’ cabiet. According to De Graaf, the cause of all this lies in the defective system of government formation. Here again, one party had to pay the price for the overcrowded centre ground in Dutch politics, and be satisfied with a place in the opposition.

Under the present system, no minister holds political responsibility for the actions of the Queen. The formateur - the person appointed by the Queen to seek common ground between potential coalition parties and put together the government on that basis - and the informateur - a Crown appointee charged with taking soundings during the government formation process and reporting back to the monarch - can work on the formation of a cabinet for weeks on end under the protection of Royal authority, without having to account for their actions directly to parliament. The ‘gap’ in accountability which thus arises is then sealed with a deft manoeuvre by the new prime minister, who in the parliamentary debate on the Government policy statement renders account retrospectively for the entire cabinet formation process, but usually ignores the phases in which he was not involved

Queen Beatrix welcomes President George Bush to the Netherlands in 1989 (Photo nfp).

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at all. This cobbled-together procedure has for eighty years been the weak point in the constitutional system of the Netherlands. Until recently, the Queen's ‘prerogative’ was for most political parties an obstacle to repairing that weak point. It may be that the ‘purple’ coalition parties will finally overcome their timidity on this point.

harry van wijnen

Translated by Julian Ross.