Rutte meets Theresa
This morning Mark Rutte meets the British Prime Minister Theresa May, following her heavily criticised decision to postpone the British parliaments vote on the Brexit deal. If anyone was watching that s**tstorm unfold yesterday, you’d see a lot of angry Brits in parliament jeering.
Theresa May finally realised the day before that the Brexit deal would not pass through parliament, even after everyone knowing this was the case. Now she’s heading to Brussels to try for another deal. So as you can imagine, the atmosphere may be a little frosty. While she travels around the different member states, she will be asking them, ‘what now?’ And it starts with Rutte today.
Pers wacht op aankomst May bij Catshuis. Rutte fietst ‘goeiemorgen’ en ‘morning’ roepend langs pic.twitter.com/C3YyNeeArR
— Jorn Jonker (@Jorn) 11 december 2018
How will a hard Brexit affect the Netherlands?
With a deal still not going through the parliament, a no-deal Brexit is looking more and more likely. Like we said yesterday in our article, the Netherlands will be one of the hardest hit and it will cost the Netherlands billions in EU fees, customs checks and taxes. As the Netherlands and Britain are also the closest allies, it seems a bit of a kick in the teeth for the country. They are the biggest trading partners, so a hard Brexit situation is likely going to be discussed today.
May has contacted Rutte on several occasions about the whole situation, however Rutte (and others) believe that she won’t get a better deal from the EU. I guess we will all find out what comes from today’s meeting, but it does feel like everyone just keeps going round in circles. Hopefully soon something will be done so both the UK, the Netherlands (and everyone else) can start properly sorting it out.
What do you think about the whole situation? Let us know in the comments!
