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@iankenway There is a big and growing movement in the netherlands to brexit too, especially seeing how the EU has handled the UK request to leave, it has generated increasing animosity towards the EU and an increasing number of Dutch people support leaving.
The EU is in need of serious reforms (I use the plural deliberately) but I think the four freedoms associated with the Treaty of Rome remain relevant. Yanis Varoufakis's critique of the EU is well-known and I think fair!
However, I cannot agree that the EU has been particularly obstructive when it comes to Brexit. Not only has the UK government exhibited extreme amateurism in its negotiations, but in recent months has shown itself to be positively misleading and truculent.
The UK should have never triggered Article 50 before parliament had a clear of what kind Brexit the public wanted. (There might have been a chance of leaving the EU in some 'forked variant' of the Norway model). But this isn't the main point which is simply that the EU Referendum in the UK in 2016 was essentially a flawed and fraudulent exercise and that the current UK Government under Johnson has zero democratic legitimacy
The news that there is "big and growing movement" (How big? Rate of growth? Etc...) in the Netherlands that is in favour of Netherexit (Dutch Brexit - isn't language funny) is disturbing. People need to drill down to the facts and wise up extremely fast. But, then again, right-wing extremists (and their mirror equivalent on the left) have always had a serpentine , smoke-and-mirrors relationship with facts!
@iankenway
I think most of us in the Netherlands see the brexit negotiations as incompetence on both sides. The EU themselves have yet to offer a fair and equitable counter offer and the UK isn't making the most equitable offers themselves. It goes both ways but it's obvious to many of us that the EU is incompetent or intentionally malicious depending on who you ask. The UK may be seen this way as well but that hardly negates what is observed of the EU.
As for how many, last poll I saw was like a year old but it showed roughly half of the dutch want a Nexit (what they call it). This number rose very sharply since the brexit vote. It is clearly still a big movement here.
