Since the war, our common membership of the institutions of post-war Europe, including NATO and the EU have brought us even closer.  British and Dutch Ministers often see each other in the margins of EU and other international meetings.  Parliamentarians from the two countries meet regularly.  There is ongoing dialogue at various political levels on many subjects.  And there is practical co-operation on a whole range of issues such as drugs and organised crime.  The Armed Services, particularly the Royal Navy and Royal Netherlands marines, have very close ties.  Dutch troops have served alongside UK forces in Bosnia, Afghanistan and Iraq.

 

In 1999 Prime Ministers Blair and Kok agreed a “Framework for the Future” to strengthen further the bilateral relationship.  The cornerstone was a new bilateral conference series.  The first conference was held in Apeldoorn in 2000.  Subsequent conferences have been held in Edinburgh (2001), Amsterdam (2003) and Norwich (March 2005).  The next is scheduled to take place in The Hague in 2007.  A Young “Apeldoorn” Conference series has also been established to bring together our countries’ future leaders.

 

The Dutch and British people know each other’s countries well.  Around 70,000 British people live in the Netherlands and 1.75m visit the Netherlands each year on business or for tourism. 1.4 million Dutch people visit the UK each year.  At least forty Dutch towns and cities are twinned with British towns and cities (e.g. Manchester and Amsterdam; Bath and Alkmaar; and Coventry and Arnhem).  BBC radio and TV channels are widely available in the Netherlands.  British newspapers and magazines are also popular since 75% of the population speaks and reads English.  Few British people of course speak Dutch, though the names of Bergkamp and Van Nistelrooij are as familiar to them as Beckham and Rooney.

 

Commercial relations are also very strong.  Bilateral trade between the UK and Netherlands is worth in excess of £32bn a year.  The UK is the second largest investor in the Netherlands, and only the US and France invest more in the UK than the Dutch.  And then there are the giant Anglo-Dutch companies such as Royal Dutch Shell, Unilever, Logica/CMG and Reed Elsevier who are global leaders and operate worldwide.  British businessmen now run major Dutch firms (eg Vendex KBB, the largest non-food retailer in the Netherlands) and Dutch businessmen run several top British firms, notably BT and Lloyds TSB.