Samenvatting

It is well known that the role of the national legislator in setting legally relevant norms is rapidly changing under the influence of increasing Europeanization, globalization and privatization. Today the national legislator is only one of the relevant norm-setters. This contribution considers the role that the Dutch legislator sees for itself in this emerging multilevel legal order. To this end, six themes of fundamental importance in a multilevel order are explored: (1) the question of when government regulation is to be preferred over private regulation; (2) the question of at which level of government (national, European, sub-national or supranational) a topic is preferably dealt with; (3) the role of the national legislator in realizing the cognoscibility and coherence of law; (4) the preferred way of implementing EU directives; (5) the question of whether the national legislator must refer to codes of conduct, certification and norms of standards bodies, and if so how; (6) the question of whether the national legislator must position its own national law on the international ‘law market.’