INTRODUCTION

This chapter analyses increasing internationalisation as a second change to the organisation as well as the delivery of public values within the infrastructure. In chapter 2, we examined the impact of regime change and analysed how public values in infrastructure provision had come under pressure from private sector involvement and with it, a blurring of the dividing line between public and private values, undermining the ‘public-ness’ of infrastructures. The second relevant challenge is that of the increasing involvement of ‘levels’ other than the national. Together, these two challenges may lead to the hypothesis that national authorities are merely one of the relevant actors alongside private actors and international and regional public actors.

As was explained in chapter 2, the national level is traditionally the focal point of both the institutional and the operational aspects of infrastructure investment decisions. Decisions to invest in infrastructure are made at the national level based on national interests and policy objectives. However, as a result of the processes of internationalisation, the situation is becoming increasingly complex. Infrastructures have become more transnational and international in their operation and investment decisions are increasingly dependent on international, and most notably European, regulations.

For the Netherlands, the European Union has become by far the most relevant international organisation with regard to investment decisions in infrastructure. Its influence is, however, far from unequivocal. Indeed, a rich variety of policy objectives and measures affect national investment decisions in an equally rich variety of ways. Most of this chapter will therefore be devoted to the significance of the European Union on infrastructural policy. A distinction will be made between eumeasures that support (or facilitate), and EU measures that constrain national investment decisions.

It is useful to recall that what has been referred to as the ‘European regulatory space’ has traditionally been dominated by the nation-states. Ministries have the formal regulatory powers, although, in practice, they have enjoyed very close relationships with the state-owned companies. The EU has played almost no role in the regulation of network industries; for instance, the EU telecommunications ministers met twice between 1959 and 1977; almost no EU sectoral legislation was passed, and network industries were seen as being beyond the reach of European primary law.