Paper prepared for the EpsNet conference ‘European in Context: Debating the Project’, Central

On 1 June 2005, the Netherlands lost its pro-European image. During the first national referendum in about two-hundred years, 61.5 % of Dutch voters rejected the European Constitutional Treaty, on a turnout of 63.3%. The Dutch ‘No ’ vote came as a surprise because it did not correspond with the image of the Netherlands as a pro-European international tradin