Centre Democrats (Netherlands)
Encyclopedia
The Centre Democrats was a political party in the Netherlands
. Founded in 1984 by members who split out from the Centre Party
(CP), the Centre Democrats was joined one month later by the only CP Member of Parliament—Hans Janmaat
. Janmaat went on to become the leader of the party, which subsequently became strongly centered around his person. The newly formed Centre Democrats represented the more moderate faction of the Centre Party, but espoused an anti-immigration and nationalist
ideology. Their claims of standing in the centre of the political landscape have thus been disputed by political scientists.
The Centre Democrats did not gain enough votes for parliamentary representation in the 1986 general election
, but Janmaat won back his seat after the following election in 1989
. In 1994
he was joined by two additional representatives won by the party. The CD was subject to a cordon sanitaire
by the other parties in Parliament, although some parties rather sought to confront it following its 1994 success. The CD failed to win any seats in the 1998 election
, and it fell into disarray until it was finally dissolved in 2002.
(CP). On 5 December the same year the only Member of Parliament for the Centre Party, Hans Janmaat
, changed party to the Centre Democrats and became its seventh member. Janmaat believed that by steering a more moderate course, the Centre Party would attract more voters at the polls, but was expelled by the party's hardliners. In an attempt to appear more mainstream than the Centre Party, the new Centre Democrats' slogans were more moderate and less explicit. As opposed to the Centre Party's Eigen volk eerst ("Our People First"), the Centre Democrats' manifesto used the Dutch proverb Oost West Thuis Best ("East, West, Home Best"). After Janmaat joined the Centre Democrats, the party became known as "his" party. Despite widespread media coverage generated by Janmaat's reputation, party membership remained small in the first few years.
During its early years, the Centre Democrats received extensive media attention on two occasions. The first occurred when the Centre Democrats and Centre Party met on 29 March 1986 in Kedichem
. A group of anti-fascist activists believed that the two parties were planning to merge, and firebombed the hotel where the meeting was held. The venue was severely damaged, Janmaat narrowly escaped death and the party secretary Wil Schuurman
had one leg amputated after jumping from a window to escape the conflagration.
Janmaat's attempt to be reinstated as a teacher at his old school following his failed re-election to parliament led to the second media frenzy. Although he was legally permitted to go back to his job, the protests of some students and parents due to his reputation as a "racist", led him to be bought off by the court from pursuing a return to his old job. Unable to go back to his former job, Jaanmaat returned to politics. Taking advantage of Janmaat's profile, the Centre Democrats contested the 1986 general election
under the name Lijst Janmaat/Centrumdemocraten, but gained just 0.1% of the vote and no parliamentary seat. The Centre Democrats failed in its attempt to win votes from the Centre Party, which gained 0.4% of the vote but also did not win a seat.
. By contesting the election in all nineteen constituencies, the party won the right to state-sponsored television and radio time but still had no more than 300 registered members. In the 1990 local elections the Centre Democrats won eleven seats, then, in the 1991 provincial elections, three seats in the provincial parliament
.
Electoral success overtook the party and Janmaat began to make controversial statements in the media. Based on his conviction that high office should be restricted to third-generation Dutch nationals, he suggested that several cabinet ministers, including Justice Minister Ernst Hirsch-Ballin who was of Jewish descent, and Agriculture State Secretary Dzsingisz Gabor who was of Hungarian
descent, should be removed from the Dutch leadership. This marked the start of prosecutions of Centre Democrats party members on charges of racism, as well as the decision by the other parties in Parliament and government to place a cordon sanitaire around the party.
The cordon sanitaire turned out to be counterproductive with the Centre Democrats winning 77 seats in the 1994 local elections and gaining representation in almost every city where it fielded a candidate. Large cities were strongholds of the party, winning more than 10% of the vote in Rotterdam
. It became the fifth largest Dutch political party. After the elections, however, scandal loomed over the Centre Democrats, largely because of its weak organization and lack of active party members. Many of its previously won local seats became vacant after a while, as elected representatives failed to take them up, joined or founded other parties, left the party or left politics altogether. Before the 1994 general election
opinion polls predicted that the party could win more than five seats in the House of Representatives. However, media reports claiming that some newly elected local members had extremist pasts damaged the Centre Democrats' prospects. A secret recording broadcast on national television one week before the election showed an Amsterdam council member bragging about having set immigrant centers on fire in the early 1980s. In the election that followed, the Centre Democrats won 2.5% of the vote and three seats in the House of Representatives (Janmaat was joined by Wil Schuurman and Cor Zonneveld), well below earlier expectations. Janmaat claimed that the relatively poor result was a result of an anti-CD campaign in the media. Due to its growth, and questions arising amongst the other parties over the development of a multicultural society, political opponents began to confront the Centre Democrats directly rather than maintain a strict cordon sanitaire around it.
Despite attempts to broaden their appeal, the issue of foreigners remained central to the party's rhetoric. Janmaat was convicted of "inciting racial hatred" by the Dutch courts for speaking out against multiculturalism. His conviction later came to be seen as unwarranted by mainstream observers. Janmaat and Schuurman, who were to marry in 1996, dominated the party. With Schuurman's son head of the party office, the Centre Democrats became almost a family affair. Janmaat remained skeptical of initiatives outside his own control, and expelled multiple local council members from the party. While much of this was due to local cooperation—unauthorized by the Centre Democrats leadership—with the more radical Centre Party '86 (CP'86), Janmaat later agreed to coordinate joint demonstrations with it. The cooperation soon fell apart and Janmaat distanced himself from CP'86 as the 1998 election approached.
In the 1995 provincial elections, in the face of competition from four new ethnocentric competitors, none of which won a seat, the Centre Democrats did not increase its three-seat presence in the provincial parliament. In the 1998 local elections the Centre Democrats lost all but one of its seats, having contested the election in just around half of the municipalities it contested in 1994. In the 1998 general election
two months later, the party lost all its seats in Parliament. This was as a result of the Centre Democrats's failure to benefit from increased attention on immigration issues, its years of internal infighting, and new legislation directed mainly against the far-right, which had raised the number of signatures per district required in order to contest elections.
as the Lijstverbinding Centrumdemocraten/Conservatieve Democraten, a supposed two-party cooperation, where the two names in reality represented the same party. It won only 0.5% of the vote in the election, a showing widely seen as the last spasm of a dying party. Janmaat's increasing physical exhaustion only served to exacerbate the situation. Nonetheless, with a new political climate following the September 11 attacks and the rise of Pim Fortuyn
, Janmaat sought political rehabilitation in his final years. The reason was that his earlier criminal convictions arose from stating things that had now become accepted.
On 18 April 2002, only a few months before Janmaat died, the party was formally dissolved. As a result it did not participate in the 2002 general election
, where the recently emerged Pim Fortuyn List attracted votes based on an appeal similar to that of the Centre Democrats.
.
, as it gave immigrants the choice between repatriation or assimilation. Its 1989 party program stated that "foreigners and minorities either adjust to the Dutch ways and customs or leave the country." The Centre Democrats considered Dutch culture to be under threat from foreigners, and that Muslim
s in particular had come to the Netherlands with the intention of taking over or dominating the country. Also opposed to "multicultural marriages," and wanting to limit the possibility of adoptions from the Third World
, the CP generally sought a return to the old Dutch society with its singular Dutch culture. According to political scientist Cas Mudde
, the party's ideology is best described as civic nationalism
. Nevertheless, by 1994 the party had moved more towards ethnic nationalism by asserting that its program began "from the indissoluble unity and solidarity of the Dutch ethnic community [...] based on the common history and the culture that originated from that history."
and European integration, seeing the Maastricht Treaty
as one of many international defeats inflicted on the Dutch government. While it generally described international organizations such as the United Nations
as superfluous and inefficient bureaucracies, it supported NATO as a means of keeping the West safe from Communism. In its 1998 program, the Centre Democrats included a call for the "reunification with Flanders
and other Dutch-speaking territories", thereby promoting the idea of a Greater Netherlands.
virus, which it put in the context of a moral crisis and moral relativism that it considered to only be solvable by returning to traditional morality.
of the Netherlands. Its other demands did not have a strong ideological coherency. Supporting a generous welfare state for the Dutch people, it was otherwise sceptical of state interventionism in the economy; notably by high taxes which would hinder private initiative, or overspending on subsidies.
, of the Centre Democrats was the Stichting Wetenschappelijke Onderbouwing Centrumdemocratische Ideologie (Foundation for the Scientific Elaboration of the Centre Democratic Ideology, SWOCI). In 1992 its name was changed to the Thomas Hobbes Stichting (Thomas Hobbes
Foundation), after Janmaat's favorite political philosopher.
The Young Centre Democrats (Junge Centrumdemocraten), became the youth organization of the Centre Democrats, having originally been founded as the youth wing of the Centre Party in the early 1980s. It was later succeeded by the CD Youth (CD-Jongeren), which was based almost exclusively in the Haarlem
area. The Centre Democrats did not attract many youngsters, nor did it establish a particularly active youth organization. Most of the far-right youth tended to join CP'86.
Over time the Centre Democrats published a variety of party papers of varying quality. The Centrumtaal and the Middenkoers were the original newspapers first published in 1986. Although the former was intended for general party news, and the latter aimed at a more intellectual readership, they did not differ much in content. By 1987–1988, Centrumtaal was more or less succeeded by CD-info, and Middenkoers by CD-actueel. CD-actueel was distributed for the last time in 1993, with CD-info succeeded by the CD-Nieuwsbrief in 1997, although in later years it had been published less and less frequently.
, the French National Front and the Belgian Vlaams Blok
. The party regularly attended annual meetings of the German People's Union and the National Front, and Janmaat spoke of his good contacts with the latter party's leader Jean-Marie Le Pen
. Relations with the Vlaams Blok created a conflict of interest given VB's arguably better contacts with CP'86, the Centre Democrats' main rival in the Netherlands. Even so, the Centre Democrats maintained official contacts domestically with both the Centre Party and its successor, the CP'86.
Netherlands
The Netherlands is a constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, located mainly in North-West Europe and with several islands in the Caribbean. Mainland Netherlands borders the North Sea to the north and west, Belgium to the south, and Germany to the east, and shares maritime borders...
. Founded in 1984 by members who split out from the Centre Party
Centre Party (Netherlands)
The Centre Party was a Dutch nationalist extreme right-wing political party espousing an anti-immigrant program. The party was founded by Henry Brookman in 1980, and was represented by Hans Janmaat in the Dutch House of Representatives from 1982, until he was expelled from the party in 1984 and...
(CP), the Centre Democrats was joined one month later by the only CP Member of Parliament—Hans Janmaat
Hans Janmaat
Johannes Gerardus Hendrikus "Hans" Janmaat was a Dutch politician of the Centre Party and later his own formed Centre Democrats . He was Parliamentary leader of the Centre Party in the House of Representatives from September 16, 1982 until October 15, 1984 when he was expelled from the party...
. Janmaat went on to become the leader of the party, which subsequently became strongly centered around his person. The newly formed Centre Democrats represented the more moderate faction of the Centre Party, but espoused an anti-immigration and nationalist
Nationalism
Nationalism is a political ideology that involves a strong identification of a group of individuals with a political entity defined in national terms, i.e. a nation. In the 'modernist' image of the nation, it is nationalism that creates national identity. There are various definitions for what...
ideology. Their claims of standing in the centre of the political landscape have thus been disputed by political scientists.
The Centre Democrats did not gain enough votes for parliamentary representation in the 1986 general election
Dutch general election, 1986
The General Election to the House of Representatives of the States-General of the Netherlands was held in the Netherlands on May 21, 1986.-National summary:...
, but Janmaat won back his seat after the following election in 1989
Dutch general election, 1989
The General Election to the House of Representatives of the States-General of the Netherlands was held in the Netherlands on September 6, 1989.-National summary:...
. In 1994
Dutch general election, 1994
The General Election to the House of Representatives of the States-General of the Netherlands was held in the Netherlands on May 3, 1994.-Results:...
he was joined by two additional representatives won by the party. The CD was subject to a cordon sanitaire
Cordon sanitaire
Cordon sanitaire — or quarantine line — is a French phrase that, literally translated, means "sanitary cordon". Though in French it originally denoted a barrier implemented to stop the spread of disease, it has often been used in English in a metaphorical sense to refer to attempts to prevent the...
by the other parties in Parliament, although some parties rather sought to confront it following its 1994 success. The CD failed to win any seats in the 1998 election
Dutch general election, 1998
The General Election to the House of Representatives of the States-General of the Netherlands was held in the Netherlands on 6 May 1998.-Result:...
, and it fell into disarray until it was finally dissolved in 2002.
Early years (1984–1989)
The Centre Democrats was founded on 7 November 1984 by a few low-key members who broke away from the Centre PartyCentre Party (Netherlands)
The Centre Party was a Dutch nationalist extreme right-wing political party espousing an anti-immigrant program. The party was founded by Henry Brookman in 1980, and was represented by Hans Janmaat in the Dutch House of Representatives from 1982, until he was expelled from the party in 1984 and...
(CP). On 5 December the same year the only Member of Parliament for the Centre Party, Hans Janmaat
Hans Janmaat
Johannes Gerardus Hendrikus "Hans" Janmaat was a Dutch politician of the Centre Party and later his own formed Centre Democrats . He was Parliamentary leader of the Centre Party in the House of Representatives from September 16, 1982 until October 15, 1984 when he was expelled from the party...
, changed party to the Centre Democrats and became its seventh member. Janmaat believed that by steering a more moderate course, the Centre Party would attract more voters at the polls, but was expelled by the party's hardliners. In an attempt to appear more mainstream than the Centre Party, the new Centre Democrats' slogans were more moderate and less explicit. As opposed to the Centre Party's Eigen volk eerst ("Our People First"), the Centre Democrats' manifesto used the Dutch proverb Oost West Thuis Best ("East, West, Home Best"). After Janmaat joined the Centre Democrats, the party became known as "his" party. Despite widespread media coverage generated by Janmaat's reputation, party membership remained small in the first few years.
During its early years, the Centre Democrats received extensive media attention on two occasions. The first occurred when the Centre Democrats and Centre Party met on 29 March 1986 in Kedichem
Kedichem
Kedichem is a village in the Dutch province of South Holland. It is located about 7 km northeast of the city of Gorinchem, in the municipality of Leerdam.Kedichem was a separate municipality until 1986, when it merged with Leerdam...
. A group of anti-fascist activists believed that the two parties were planning to merge, and firebombed the hotel where the meeting was held. The venue was severely damaged, Janmaat narrowly escaped death and the party secretary Wil Schuurman
Wil Schuurman
Wilhelmina Berendina Schuurman is a former Dutch politician who served from 1994 until 1998 in the House of Representatives on behalf of the Centre Democrats....
had one leg amputated after jumping from a window to escape the conflagration.
Janmaat's attempt to be reinstated as a teacher at his old school following his failed re-election to parliament led to the second media frenzy. Although he was legally permitted to go back to his job, the protests of some students and parents due to his reputation as a "racist", led him to be bought off by the court from pursuing a return to his old job. Unable to go back to his former job, Jaanmaat returned to politics. Taking advantage of Janmaat's profile, the Centre Democrats contested the 1986 general election
Dutch general election, 1986
The General Election to the House of Representatives of the States-General of the Netherlands was held in the Netherlands on May 21, 1986.-National summary:...
under the name Lijst Janmaat/Centrumdemocraten, but gained just 0.1% of the vote and no parliamentary seat. The Centre Democrats failed in its attempt to win votes from the Centre Party, which gained 0.4% of the vote but also did not win a seat.
In parliament (1989–1998)
Following the 1986 election, the Centre Democrats worked on improving both its image and its grassroots support. The strategy paid off with Janmaat winning a seat in the House of Representatives in the 1989 general electionDutch general election, 1989
The General Election to the House of Representatives of the States-General of the Netherlands was held in the Netherlands on September 6, 1989.-National summary:...
. By contesting the election in all nineteen constituencies, the party won the right to state-sponsored television and radio time but still had no more than 300 registered members. In the 1990 local elections the Centre Democrats won eleven seats, then, in the 1991 provincial elections, three seats in the provincial parliament
States-Provincial
The States'-Provincial is the provincial parliament and legislative assembly in each of the Provinces of the Netherlands. It is elected for each province simultaneously once every four years and has the responsibility for matters of sub-national or regional importance...
.
Electoral success overtook the party and Janmaat began to make controversial statements in the media. Based on his conviction that high office should be restricted to third-generation Dutch nationals, he suggested that several cabinet ministers, including Justice Minister Ernst Hirsch-Ballin who was of Jewish descent, and Agriculture State Secretary Dzsingisz Gabor who was of Hungarian
Hungary
Hungary , officially the Republic of Hungary , is a landlocked country in Central Europe. It is situated in the Carpathian Basin and is bordered by Slovakia to the north, Ukraine and Romania to the east, Serbia and Croatia to the south, Slovenia to the southwest and Austria to the west. The...
descent, should be removed from the Dutch leadership. This marked the start of prosecutions of Centre Democrats party members on charges of racism, as well as the decision by the other parties in Parliament and government to place a cordon sanitaire around the party.
The cordon sanitaire turned out to be counterproductive with the Centre Democrats winning 77 seats in the 1994 local elections and gaining representation in almost every city where it fielded a candidate. Large cities were strongholds of the party, winning more than 10% of the vote in Rotterdam
Rotterdam
Rotterdam is the second-largest city in the Netherlands and one of the largest ports in the world. Starting as a dam on the Rotte river, Rotterdam has grown into a major international commercial centre...
. It became the fifth largest Dutch political party. After the elections, however, scandal loomed over the Centre Democrats, largely because of its weak organization and lack of active party members. Many of its previously won local seats became vacant after a while, as elected representatives failed to take them up, joined or founded other parties, left the party or left politics altogether. Before the 1994 general election
Dutch general election, 1994
The General Election to the House of Representatives of the States-General of the Netherlands was held in the Netherlands on May 3, 1994.-Results:...
opinion polls predicted that the party could win more than five seats in the House of Representatives. However, media reports claiming that some newly elected local members had extremist pasts damaged the Centre Democrats' prospects. A secret recording broadcast on national television one week before the election showed an Amsterdam council member bragging about having set immigrant centers on fire in the early 1980s. In the election that followed, the Centre Democrats won 2.5% of the vote and three seats in the House of Representatives (Janmaat was joined by Wil Schuurman and Cor Zonneveld), well below earlier expectations. Janmaat claimed that the relatively poor result was a result of an anti-CD campaign in the media. Due to its growth, and questions arising amongst the other parties over the development of a multicultural society, political opponents began to confront the Centre Democrats directly rather than maintain a strict cordon sanitaire around it.
Despite attempts to broaden their appeal, the issue of foreigners remained central to the party's rhetoric. Janmaat was convicted of "inciting racial hatred" by the Dutch courts for speaking out against multiculturalism. His conviction later came to be seen as unwarranted by mainstream observers. Janmaat and Schuurman, who were to marry in 1996, dominated the party. With Schuurman's son head of the party office, the Centre Democrats became almost a family affair. Janmaat remained skeptical of initiatives outside his own control, and expelled multiple local council members from the party. While much of this was due to local cooperation—unauthorized by the Centre Democrats leadership—with the more radical Centre Party '86 (CP'86), Janmaat later agreed to coordinate joint demonstrations with it. The cooperation soon fell apart and Janmaat distanced himself from CP'86 as the 1998 election approached.
In the 1995 provincial elections, in the face of competition from four new ethnocentric competitors, none of which won a seat, the Centre Democrats did not increase its three-seat presence in the provincial parliament. In the 1998 local elections the Centre Democrats lost all but one of its seats, having contested the election in just around half of the municipalities it contested in 1994. In the 1998 general election
Dutch general election, 1998
The General Election to the House of Representatives of the States-General of the Netherlands was held in the Netherlands on 6 May 1998.-Result:...
two months later, the party lost all its seats in Parliament. This was as a result of the Centre Democrats's failure to benefit from increased attention on immigration issues, its years of internal infighting, and new legislation directed mainly against the far-right, which had raised the number of signatures per district required in order to contest elections.
Demise (1998–2002)
After the 1998 election, Janmaat became increasingly worried by legal pressure, believing that the Centre Democrats could become the government's next target after CP'86 was officially banned in 1998. He founded the "Conservative Democrats" as a potential successor party in the event that the Centre Democrats was proscribed. The new party contested the 1999 European electionsEuropean Parliament election, 1999 (Netherlands)
The European Parliament election of 1999 in the Netherlands was the election of MEP representing Netherlands constituency for the 1999-2004 term of the European Parliament. It was part of the wider 1999 European election. It was held on on June 10, 1999...
as the Lijstverbinding Centrumdemocraten/Conservatieve Democraten, a supposed two-party cooperation, where the two names in reality represented the same party. It won only 0.5% of the vote in the election, a showing widely seen as the last spasm of a dying party. Janmaat's increasing physical exhaustion only served to exacerbate the situation. Nonetheless, with a new political climate following the September 11 attacks and the rise of Pim Fortuyn
Pim Fortuyn
Wilhelmus Simon Petrus Fortuijn, known as Pim Fortuyn was a Dutch politician, civil servant, sociologist, author and professor who formed his own party, Pim Fortuyn List ....
, Janmaat sought political rehabilitation in his final years. The reason was that his earlier criminal convictions arose from stating things that had now become accepted.
On 18 April 2002, only a few months before Janmaat died, the party was formally dissolved. As a result it did not participate in the 2002 general election
Dutch general election, 2002
The General Election to the House of Representatives of the States-General of the Netherlands was held in the Netherlands on May 15, 2002....
, where the recently emerged Pim Fortuyn List attracted votes based on an appeal similar to that of the Centre Democrats.
Ideology
After the split from the Centre Party, the ideology of the Centre Democrats was broadly similar to that of its originator, although the Centre Party became increasingly radical in the following years. The Centre Democrats did not publish a party or electoral manifesto before 1989, and until then its policies were known primarily through the small-scale distribution of pamphlets, which were almost exact copies of old Centre Party pamphlets. Like the Centre Party, the Centre Democrats claimed to be at the centre of the political spectrum, representing a "centre-democratic ideology". Nevertheless, the party focused mainly on the issue of immigration, and mainstream observers considered the party's ideology to be a populist form of nationalismNationalism
Nationalism is a political ideology that involves a strong identification of a group of individuals with a political entity defined in national terms, i.e. a nation. In the 'modernist' image of the nation, it is nationalism that creates national identity. There are various definitions for what...
.
Immigration and multiculturalism
The Centre Democrats was strongly opposed to multiculturalism and immigration. It did not, however, exclude people based on ethnicity. It spoke, initially at least, of a Dutch population rather than a Dutch ethnic community. The party remained distinct from ethnic nationalistsEthnic nationalism
Ethnic nationalism is a form of nationalism wherein the "nation" is defined in terms of ethnicity. Whatever specific ethnicity is involved, ethnic nationalism always includes some element of descent from previous generations and the implied claim of ethnic essentialism, i.e...
, as it gave immigrants the choice between repatriation or assimilation. Its 1989 party program stated that "foreigners and minorities either adjust to the Dutch ways and customs or leave the country." The Centre Democrats considered Dutch culture to be under threat from foreigners, and that Muslim
Muslim
A Muslim, also spelled Moslem, is an adherent of Islam, a monotheistic, Abrahamic religion based on the Quran, which Muslims consider the verbatim word of God as revealed to prophet Muhammad. "Muslim" is the Arabic term for "submitter" .Muslims believe that God is one and incomparable...
s in particular had come to the Netherlands with the intention of taking over or dominating the country. Also opposed to "multicultural marriages," and wanting to limit the possibility of adoptions from the Third World
Third World
The term Third World arose during the Cold War to define countries that remained non-aligned with either capitalism and NATO , or communism and the Soviet Union...
, the CP generally sought a return to the old Dutch society with its singular Dutch culture. According to political scientist Cas Mudde
Cas Mudde
Cas Mudde is a Dutch academic who studies the Extreme Right in Europe. As of 2010 he is a visiting scholar at the Janet Prindle Institute for Ethics and visiting associate professor at the political science department DePauw University in Greencastle, Indiana...
, the party's ideology is best described as civic nationalism
Civic nationalism
Liberal Nationalism is a kind of nationalism identified by political philosophers who believe in a non-xenophobic form of nationalism compatible with liberal values of freedom, tolerance, equality, and individual rights. Ernest Renan and John Stuart Mill are often thought to be early liberal...
. Nevertheless, by 1994 the party had moved more towards ethnic nationalism by asserting that its program began "from the indissoluble unity and solidarity of the Dutch ethnic community [...] based on the common history and the culture that originated from that history."
Foreign policy
The Centre Democrats opposed any limitation of the sovereignty of the Dutch state and was thus skeptical of the European UnionEuropean Union
The European Union is an economic and political union of 27 independent member states which are located primarily in Europe. The EU traces its origins from the European Coal and Steel Community and the European Economic Community , formed by six countries in 1958...
and European integration, seeing the Maastricht Treaty
Maastricht Treaty
The Maastricht Treaty was signed on 7 February 1992 by the members of the European Community in Maastricht, Netherlands. On 9–10 December 1991, the same city hosted the European Council which drafted the treaty...
as one of many international defeats inflicted on the Dutch government. While it generally described international organizations such as the United Nations
United Nations
The United Nations is an international organization whose stated aims are facilitating cooperation in international law, international security, economic development, social progress, human rights, and achievement of world peace...
as superfluous and inefficient bureaucracies, it supported NATO as a means of keeping the West safe from Communism. In its 1998 program, the Centre Democrats included a call for the "reunification with Flanders
Flanders
Flanders is the community of the Flemings but also one of the institutions in Belgium, and a geographical region located in parts of present-day Belgium, France and the Netherlands. "Flanders" can also refer to the northern part of Belgium that contains Brussels, Bruges, Ghent and Antwerp...
and other Dutch-speaking territories", thereby promoting the idea of a Greater Netherlands.
Society
While the party did not originally place heavy emphasis on ethical issues, it did see the family as the cornerstone of society. By 1994, it had become more conservative, stressing law and order as well as traditional morals and values. Over the years, it also sought to make divorce more difficult, particularly for families with children. The party also lent much space to discussing the AIDSAIDS
Acquired immune deficiency syndrome or acquired immunodeficiency syndrome is a disease of the human immune system caused by the human immunodeficiency virus...
virus, which it put in the context of a moral crisis and moral relativism that it considered to only be solvable by returning to traditional morality.
Economic
The party's economic policies did not deviate substantially from the generally supported mixed economyMixed economy
Mixed economy is an economic system in which both the state and private sector direct the economy, reflecting characteristics of both market economies and planned economies. Most mixed economies can be described as market economies with strong regulatory oversight, in addition to having a variety...
of the Netherlands. Its other demands did not have a strong ideological coherency. Supporting a generous welfare state for the Dutch people, it was otherwise sceptical of state interventionism in the economy; notably by high taxes which would hinder private initiative, or overspending on subsidies.
Organisation
The original scientific bureau, or think tankThink tank
A think tank is an organization that conducts research and engages in advocacy in areas such as social policy, political strategy, economics, military, and technology issues. Most think tanks are non-profit organizations, which some countries such as the United States and Canada provide with tax...
, of the Centre Democrats was the Stichting Wetenschappelijke Onderbouwing Centrumdemocratische Ideologie (Foundation for the Scientific Elaboration of the Centre Democratic Ideology, SWOCI). In 1992 its name was changed to the Thomas Hobbes Stichting (Thomas Hobbes
Thomas Hobbes
Thomas Hobbes of Malmesbury , in some older texts Thomas Hobbs of Malmsbury, was an English philosopher, best known today for his work on political philosophy...
Foundation), after Janmaat's favorite political philosopher.
The Young Centre Democrats (Junge Centrumdemocraten), became the youth organization of the Centre Democrats, having originally been founded as the youth wing of the Centre Party in the early 1980s. It was later succeeded by the CD Youth (CD-Jongeren), which was based almost exclusively in the Haarlem
Haarlem
Haarlem is a municipality and a city in the Netherlands. It is the capital of the province of North Holland, the northern half of Holland, which at one time was the most powerful of the seven provinces of the Dutch Republic...
area. The Centre Democrats did not attract many youngsters, nor did it establish a particularly active youth organization. Most of the far-right youth tended to join CP'86.
Over time the Centre Democrats published a variety of party papers of varying quality. The Centrumtaal and the Middenkoers were the original newspapers first published in 1986. Although the former was intended for general party news, and the latter aimed at a more intellectual readership, they did not differ much in content. By 1987–1988, Centrumtaal was more or less succeeded by CD-info, and Middenkoers by CD-actueel. CD-actueel was distributed for the last time in 1993, with CD-info succeeded by the CD-Nieuwsbrief in 1997, although in later years it had been published less and less frequently.
International relations
The CD regarded itself as related to other European "patriotic parties", but its official contact was limited to the German People's UnionGerman People's Union
The German People's Union is a nationalist political party in Germany. It was founded by publisher Gerhard Frey as an informal association in 1971 and established as a party in 1987. Financially, it is largely dependent on Frey....
, the French National Front and the Belgian Vlaams Blok
Vlaams Blok
The Vlaams Blok was a Belgian far-right and secessionist political party with an anti-immigration platform. Its ideologies embraced Flemish nationalism, calling for the independence of Flanders. From its creation in 1978, it was the most notable militant right wing of the Flemish movement. Vlaams...
. The party regularly attended annual meetings of the German People's Union and the National Front, and Janmaat spoke of his good contacts with the latter party's leader Jean-Marie Le Pen
Jean-Marie Le Pen
Jean-Marie Le Pen is a French far right-wing and nationalist politician who is founder and former president of the Front National party. Le Pen has run for the French presidency five times, most notably in 2002, when in a surprise upset he came second, polling more votes in the first round than...
. Relations with the Vlaams Blok created a conflict of interest given VB's arguably better contacts with CP'86, the Centre Democrats' main rival in the Netherlands. Even so, the Centre Democrats maintained official contacts domestically with both the Centre Party and its successor, the CP'86.
House of Representatives
| Election year | # of total votes | % of overall vote | # of seats won |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1986 Dutch general election, 1986 The General Election to the House of Representatives of the States-General of the Netherlands was held in the Netherlands on May 21, 1986.-National summary:... |
12,277 | 0.1% | 0 |
| 1989 Dutch general election, 1989 The General Election to the House of Representatives of the States-General of the Netherlands was held in the Netherlands on September 6, 1989.-National summary:... |
81,527 | 0.9% | 1 |
| 1994 Dutch general election, 1994 The General Election to the House of Representatives of the States-General of the Netherlands was held in the Netherlands on May 3, 1994.-Results:... |
220,621 | 2.4% | 3 |
| 1998 Dutch general election, 1998 The General Election to the House of Representatives of the States-General of the Netherlands was held in the Netherlands on 6 May 1998.-Result:... |
52,226 | 0.5% | 0 |
European Parliament
| Election year | # of total votes | % of overall vote | # of seats won |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1989 European Parliament election, 1989 (Netherlands) The European Parliament election of 1989 in the Netherlands was the election of MEP representing Netherlands constituency for the 1989-1994 term of the European Parliament. It was part of the wider 1989 European election... |
40,779 | 0.8% | 0 |
| 1994 European Parliament election, 1994 (Netherlands) The European Parliament election of 1994 in the Netherlands was the election of MEP representing Netherlands constituency for the 1994-1999 term of the European Parliament. It was part of the wider 1994 European election. It was held on on June 9, 1994.... |
43,300 | 1.0% | 0 |
| 1999 European Parliament election, 1999 (Netherlands) The European Parliament election of 1999 in the Netherlands was the election of MEP representing Netherlands constituency for the 1999-2004 term of the European Parliament. It was part of the wider 1999 European election. It was held on on June 10, 1999... |
17,740 | 0.5% | 0 |