Europe must wake up to the drastic consequences of a hard Brexit | Joris Luyendijk
Because it is such a riveting clown show with new crazy episodes almost every day, Europeans can be forgiven for ignoring the fact that Brexit is going to hurt them too. But as the date of Britain's departure comes closer and Theresa May's government continues its kamikaze policy of demanding the politically unthinkable from the EU, it is time for Europeans to wake and begin preparing for the worst.
On Thursday the Dutch government published a report drawn up by the consultancy firm KPMG analysing the consequences of a "no-deal" Brexit in which the UK leaves the EU without an agreement on 29 March 2019. Here are the practical implications and cold numbers behind the hot-headed rhetoric about no deal with the EU being "better than a bad deal" for Britain: should the UK "crash" out of the EU by late March 2019 the Dutch companies trading with the UK will have to secure a total of no less than 4.2m exporting and 750,000 importing licences. If by this time both states have a functioning customs system in place - a big if for this consistently incompetent UK government - costs for companies are between a80 and a130. That is per licence.
A hard Brexit could make every Dutch person poorer by an average of a1,000
Related: Through humility and understanding, we can still stop Brexit | Andrew Adonis
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