Van Houwelingen was one of the initiators of Burgercomité-EU (EU citizen committee), which aims to make decisions surrounding the EU more democratic. After a law was passed that made it possible to trigger an advisory referendum, the organization cooperated with GeenStijl and Forum for Democracy to get a referendum on the approval of the European Union–Ukraine Association Agreement. The referendum was held in 2016 after enough signatures had been collected, and Burgercomité-EU campaigned against the agreement. Van Houwelingen also co-authored a manifesto opposing it. A few weeks after the referendum, "NRC Handelsblad" revealed that a novel by Van Houwelingen had been published in 2010 under the pseudonym Vossius. The book's main character argues in favor of city-states, discrimination of minorities, oppression of women, and the abolition of human rights, and he calls the EU the source of many evils.