Soon, the Dutch Senate will make the final decision on the introduction of the national facultative referendum in the Netherlands (see here). The law has a good chance to be adopted, although you can never be certain in politics. With the facultative referendum, citizens can try to block a new law or treaty which was approved by parliament. It works like a break: citizens can try to prevent new legislation from entering into force. Until now it has been supported by the progressive parties and the populists. The liberals and three Christian parties oppose the facultative referendum.

Start of a new campaign

The Referendum Platform in the Netherlands is convinced that right now is a good moment to start a new campaign. Aim is to also introduce the citizens’ initiative in the Netherlands: “Maak de Wet!” (Make the Law!). With this instrument, citizens can trigger referendums about their own proposals. This works like a gas pedal: citizens can propose new policies when the parliament refuses to act. The idea of the citizens’ initiative is relatively new in Dutch politics, in which the referendum debate has always centered around the facultative (“corrective”) referendum.

The core team

Together with two other organisations, the Agora Europe foundation and Netwerk Democratie (Network Democracy), we decided to start this campaign. The core team consists of six people:

•    Niesco Dubbelboer (who as member of parliament initiated the law proposal for the national facultative referendum, the 2005 national referendum on the Dutch constitution and the national citizen initiative which is an agenda right introduced in 2006)
•    Eisse Kalk (former director of the national Institute for Public and Politics, and a pioneer of ‘participative democracy’ in the Netherlands since the 1970s)
•    Josien Pieterse (co-director of Netwerk Democratie and active in many art and democracy organisations)
•    Mieke van Heesewijk (co-director of Netwerk Democratie and among others former specialist in e-participation at the Ministry of the Interior)
•    Tessa Plukaard (our legal trainee and researcher)
•    Arjen Nijeboer (co-founder of the Referendum Platform, campaigner, advisor on democracy issues and, with Jos Verhulst, author of “Direct democracy: facts and arguments about the introduction of initiative and referendum” (2007) published by Democracy International in 9 languages)

We held our first public meeting in Amsterdam on 8 November 2013. About 30 people were present.

We see five steps:

1. Building up a broad coalition of active citizens, organisations, social scientists and politicians.
2. Studying foreign examples (Switzerland, the USA, Germany, Austria, Slovakia, …) and the legal possibilities in the Netherlands.
3. Discussing the ideal citizens’ initiative at public meetings, our Facebook and Tumblr pages and other means.
4. Drafting our own law proposal.
5. Finding parliamentarians who want to bring our law proposal into the Parliament, and lobby the proposal. Alternatively, we may use the national citizen’s initiative (the agenda right) to bring our law proposal into the parliament.

This will be the first time in Dutch history that a citizen group draws up its own law proposal.

Legal obstacles

Unfortunately, there is no two-third majority in the Dutch parliament to change the constitution. The Referendum Platform has come to the conclusion that the way forward is to work within the current constitutional framework the best way we can, so politicians and citizens can get used to (a non-threatening form of) direct democracy. We know from e.g. American opinion polls that public support for direct democracy tends to grow with regards to the number of referendums that are held. So we hope this route will increase support for a constitutional change in the future. We realize we are taking a risk with this. But the alternative is to sit and wait for decades.

This means that for now, popular votes are legally non-binding, though politically almost binding. The current constitution also says (articles 81-87) that only the government or individual members of parliament can introduce law proposals. We do not know what this means for our popular initiative yet, whether we can find a legal way around this or the citizens can only vote on general proposals instead of finished law proposals. We are enlisting the help of specialized lawyers to find the best solution.

Two years required

All in all, the process will take at least two years (including the time the parliament minimally needs to deal with our law proposal). We have no funding yet for this campaign. We can only really execute this campaign well if we find some money to cover our basic budget, and are looking for partners right now. But we decided that we aren’t going to wait for this. We will start anyway.

Our main page is our Facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/maakdewet. Do “like” this page! Information can also be found on http://maakdewet.tumblr.com, http://www.referendumplatform.nl and http://www.netdem.nl – only in Dutch however.

Text by Arjen Nijeboer

Arjen Nijeboer is co-founder and spokesperson of the Referendum Platform, and an independent activist, journalist and advisor. The Referendum Platform is a member of Democracy International's Council.