After Britain leaves the European Union, British citizens in the Netherlands will have the same rights as they do now, although the freedom to move to another EU state is still up for discussion.
This is based on the terms of the deal thrashed out between Brussels and the British government last week.
As reported by Dutch News online, the Dutch statistics office CBS estimates there are almost 85,000 Brits in the Netherlands (compared with 73,000 Dutch nationals in the UK).
British expats make up around 1% of the population in cities such as Amsterdam.
“Good to see that sufficient progress has been made in Brexit negotiations in the areas of citizens’ rights, the financial aspects and the [Northern] Irish border,” Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte said on Twitter.
“I have told Theresa May I am happy that we can proceed to the next phase in which we can discuss our future relationship.”
However, Jane Golding, chairwoman of lobby group British in Europe said the deal is even worse than expected.
“After 18 months of wrangling the UK and EU have sold 4.5m people down the river in a grubby bargain that will have a severe impact on ordinary people’s ability to live their lives as we do now,” she said. “This is a double disaster for British people living in Europe. At the moment, not only is it unclear whether we keep our automatic residency rights, but it looks like we can also kiss goodbye to continuing free movement beyond any agreed transition period – which so many of us who work across Europe rely on to support our families.”
Dutch foreign affairs minister Halbe Zijlstra told reporters it is extremely important that Britain’s obligations to the EU are “handled neatly”. “Brexit is bad news but among all the bad, this is good news,” he said.
