The Centre Democrats opposed any limitation of the sovereignty of the Dutch state and was thus skeptical of the European Union and European integration, seeing the Maastricht Treaty as one of many international defeats inflicted on the Dutch government.[26] While it generally described international organizations such as the United Nations as superfluous and inefficient bureaucracies, it supported NATO as a means of keeping the West safe from Communism.[27] In its 1998 program, the Centre Democrats included a call for the "reunification with Flanders and other Dutch-speaking territories", thereby promoting the idea of a Greater Netherlands