The European Commission as a driver of change: State aid, neoliberalism and the closure of the Amsterdam shipyards

Sjoerd Keulen; Ronald Kroeze

doi:10.52024/tseg.12079

Author(s)

Sjoerd Keulen Algemene Rekenkamer
Ronald Kroeze Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.52024/tseg.12079

Abstract

By analysing the case of the closure of the Amsterdam shipyards in the 1980s, this article shows how the European Commission (EC) actively promoted a neoliberal turn in policies on state support for economic sectors in Western Europe. In addition to the EC, leading civil servants within the Dutch ministries of Economic Affairs and Finance emerged clearly as embracing neoliberal ideas early on as an answer to tackle the economic crisis of the 1970s. A third, often neglected factor in explanations for the rise of neoliberalism were management consultants – in this case from management consultancy firm McKinsey – who wrote alarming reports about the shipbuilding industry and promoted ideas that emphasized the importance of business principles and individual managers as key for improvement, thereby offering an alternative to macroeconomic Keynesian models of growth.

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Author Biographies

Sjoerd Keulen, Algemene Rekenkamer

Sjoerd Keulen (1982) is a specialist advisor and coordinator of the Netherlands Court of Audit. He investigates accounting and policy evaluations and the history of financial management and budget policy. In 2014 he took his PhD at the University of Amsterdam for his thesis Monumenten van Beleid. De wisselwerking tussen Nederlands rijksoverheidsbeleid, sociale wetenschappen en politieke cultuur, 1945-2002 (Hilversum: Uitgeverij Verloren, 2014).
Ronald Kroeze, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam

Ronald Kroeze (1983) is associate professor of political history at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. He took his PhD on the history of political corruption and in his research focuses on modern political history, (anti)corruption, colonial governance, oral history, and the role of management in corporate industry and politics. He was a visiting scholar at Oxford University and at Humboldt-Universität in Berlin. He previously published R. Kroeze, A. Vitória and G. Geltner (eds), Anticorruption in History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018).