Christian Democratic Appeal - Ideology and Issues

Ideology and Issues

The CDA is a Christian democratic party, but the Bible is only seen as one source of inspiration, for individual members of parliament. The party also has Jewish, Muslim and Hindu members of parliament, and it favors the integration of minorities into Dutch culture.

The party has four main ideals: shared responsibility, stewardship, justice and solidarity. Shared responsibility refers to the way society should be organized: not one organization should control all society, instead the state, the market, and social institutions, like churches and unions should work together. This is called sphere sovereignty, a core concept of Protestant political philosophy. Furthermore, this refers to the way the state should be organized. Not one level of the state should have total control, instead responsibility should be shared between local, provincial, national and European government. This is called subsidiarity in Catholic political thought. With stewardship the Christian Democrats refer to the way we should treat our planet: the Earth is a gift from God. Therefore we should try to preserve our environment.

Practically, this means the CDA is a centre party. However, the party has a considerable centre-left wing, that supports eco-friendly politics, a strong pro-European policy and favors centre-left coalitions. The position of the centre-left group within the party has been weakened since the party's participation in the centre-right minority cabinet with the VVD (the Rutte cabinet), a cabinet that strongly depends on the parliamentary support of the Party for Freedom. CDA politicians that can be considered centrist or centre-left: Jack Biskop (MP), Ad Koppejan (MP), Kathleen Ferrier (MP; daughter of the late Johan Ferrier, president of Suriname 1975–1980), Dries van Agt (former Prime Minister), Ruud Lubbers (former Prime Minister) and Herman Wijffels (former chairman of the Social Economic Council, former informateur).

It's interesting to know that Maxime Verhagen, the informal leader of the CDA and current deputy Prime Minister, strongly denies the claim that the CDA is considered a right-wing party. Verhagen continues to tell the media that his party is a centrist and moderate party and that the CDA participates in a centre-right coalition (with the People's Party for Freedom and Democracy (VVD) as the right-wing component and the CDA as the centrist component). However, his colleague in the cabinet, minister of Defence, Hans Hillen, is a strong proponent of a conservative CDA.

• The state deficit should be repaid in one generation, to cope with the effects of the aging population.
• The toleration of soft drugs should come to an end, furthermore the practices of prostitution, abortion and euthanasia should be more limited.
• The party is a staunch proponent of European integration and Turkey's possible EU membership in the future.
• The party wants to make schools and hospitals more responsible for their own policy, instead of being regulated by the government.