100 Firms Relocate to Netherlands Amid Brexit

Date: 26 August 2019 - 22:05

News ID: ۶۹۷۵۳

AMSTERDAM (Reuters) -- Nearly 100 companies have relocated from Britain to the Netherlands or set up offices there to be within the European Union due to the United Kingdom’s planned departure from the bloc, a Dutch government agency said on Monday.
Another 325 companies worried about losing access to the European market are considering a move, the Netherlands Foreign Investment Agency said.
"The ongoing growing uncertainty in the United Kingdom, and the increasingly clearer possibility of a no deal, is causing major economic unrest for these companies,” said Jeroen Nijland, NFIA commissioner. "That is why more and more companies are orienting themselves in the Netherlands as a potential new base in the European market.”
The businesses are in finance, information technology, media, advertising, life sciences and health, the NFIA said.
The Netherlands has been competing with Germany, France, Belgium and Ireland to attract Brexit-related moves.
Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who took office last month, has pledged to take Britain out of the European Union at the end of October with or without an exit deal.
There has been no sign of a breakthrough in Brexit talks and businesses should continue to prepare for Britain to leave the European Union without a withdrawal agreement, Irish Foreign Minister Simon Coveney said on Monday.
"We still don’t have the outcome that we are looking for, which is a deal to prevent a no-deal Brexit. So the message from the Irish government to everybody who is linked to Brexit... is to prepare for a no-deal,” Coveney told Ireland’s RTE radio.
Coveney said it was not surprising that there was no breakthrough as the EU is sticking to its position that any deal must be done on the basis of the Withdrawal Agreement negotiated over the past two and a half years.
Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison said his meeting with counterpart Boris Johnson had left him convinced that the British leader could deliver Brexit, speaking to reporters on the sidelines of a G7 summit.
When asked if he believed Johnson could deliver Brexit he said: "I tell you, sat in that room with him this morning you would be absolutely convinced of it.”