THE HAGUE, 25/11/00 - European Commissioner Frits Bolkestein considers that the Dutch government is too vague about the European future. It is time for naming names, said the former conservative VVD party leader in a lecture to the Dutch sector of the Liberal Internationale.

Bolkestein termed the vision of the future of the EU presented by the cabinet on Prince's Day (Budget Day) largely a collection of extremely vague ideas. But time presses, because "Europe is a work in progress". The cabinet should be more ambitious, for example by explaining why it is so important that majority decisions are used more often, in place of unanimity.

In a reference to the upcoming summit of EU government leaders in Nice, Bolkestein warned the cabinet that it should not come out too strongly on the issue of the new weighting of votes in the European Council. The Netherlands likes to present itself as "the smallest of the big member states", but Bolkestein asked himself whether this can work. "If you get too big for your boots, the danger arises that the small member states find the Netherlands stuck up, and the big ones, overly pretentious. "