ABSTRACT
This chapter presents the Netherlands, a small but confident member state of the European Union (EU), and a net contributor to the EU budget. The chapter starts with a general introduction to the Netherlands and the country’s path to EU membership. It further gives a compact overview of the political system of the Netherlands and key figures on its population and economy. The chapter continues with key highlights of political and public debates in the Netherlands about European integration. The substantive third section of the chapter outlines the common patterns that emerged in the focus group discussions in the Netherlands, particularly across the discussed scenarios presented to the participants and also between and within the three sociodemographic groups. The findings show that, overall, the Dutch participants felt inclined to be in solidarity with other member states in the EU. At the same time, however, they tried to strike a balance between seeing the Netherlands as an economically strong and influential country and also as a “small frog country”, which should sometimes refrain from contributing too much.
