How to set an example : EU social normative power and its influence on Dutch national debates.

This thesis puts the European Union’s (EU) normative power in a historical context and combines it with EU’s development of social goals and measures surrounding the turn of the twenty-first century. This provides social normative power to be central phenomenon. The development of EU’s social normative power is analyzed through its founding Treaties. It shows how this development leads to the construction of the European Constitution in the beginning of the twenty-first century. This treaty got rejected by the Netherlands through a national referendum, but was reused almost in its entirety in... Mehr ...