Dutch PM Mark Rutte, this week confirmed that Dutch nationals in the UK who are considering securing British citizenship in order to avoid complication after Brexit, will be stripped of their Netherlands passports due to existing limits on dual nationality. This means in effect, that 100,000 Dutch nationals living in the UK face an uncertain future after March 2019.
It seems that several European countries still do not allow dual citizenship and if their citizens apply for a British nationality ahead of Brexit, they will be forced to abandon their original nationality.
Following the EU referendum, many rushed to apply for Permanent Residence documents believing that these would be sufficient to ensure they could remain in post Brexit UK. However, given the ongoing uncertainty over rights for EU nationals after Brexit, many are now considering applying for the ‘ultimate security’ – a British passport.
Dutch nationals are now in a dilemma – are they prepared to abandon their nationality to live in the UK after Brexit?
Mark Rutte explains the reasoning behind the country’s strict nationality rules as:
“…having a nationality is always associated with an actual link to a certain country. If at some point there is a question of a connection to the Netherlands or if the link to another country has become stronger than that with the Netherlands, Dutch nationality will end”.
Only a handful of European countries do not officially allow dual citizenship: Austria Estonia, Lithuania, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland* and Slovakia.
Poland does not explicitly allow or recognise dual citizenship, yet it is tolerated by the government for a Polish person to hold two passports.