Even football heartbreak can’t harm the City’s friendship with Europe
England may have beaten the Netherlands in the Euros, but our two nations will always be close friends off the pitch, says Michael Mainelli
As England and the Netherlands went toe-to-toe, or, more accurately, boot-to-boot, in Dortmund last Wednesday evening, I had just returned from a far more congenial four-day trip to Amsterdam and The Hague where I was very warmly welcomed while representing the City.
Lord Mayors typically spend over 100 days of their one-year term on 25 or so overseas visits covering all four corners of the globe. With the UK enjoying closer relations with our friends in the EU, this mayoralty includes more trips to European nations than in recent years – a reflection of a very welcome shift in national diplomacy. One of my daughters studied engineering in Twente and Delft, and is now happily settled in the Netherlands, so you could say that strengthening UK-Dutch relations runs in the family.
Of course, our close and mutually beneficial partnership with our one-time naval foe, now long-term friend, stretches back hundreds of years – something we’re reminded of daily at Mansion House thanks to a number of Van de Velde oil paintings housed in our collection.
The New Learning sparked by Erasmus and other great humanists in the 16th Century helped to turn London into a centre of learning, a legacy still seen today in the 40 learned societies, 70 higher education institutions, and 130 research institutes in and around the Square Mile. In the centuries that followed, large numbers of Dutch emigrees settled in the City – many of them skilled craftsmen, bankers, merchants, and architects – forming its largest expatriate group, no doubt aided by the arrival of William of Orange in 1688.
I am proud that my ward of Broad Street, sometimes referred to as the Dutch Ward, is home to Nederlandse Kerk – the Dutch Church at Austin Friars, established in 1550. It’s the oldest Dutch-language church in the world, and the mother church of all Dutch reformed churches, continuing to hold weekly Dutch-language services to this day.
It is no wonder that we collaborate so closely with our North Sea neighbours. The Netherlands is the UK’s third largest trading partner, accounting for 6.9 per cent of total trade, and we are each other’s second largest foreign investors, with a combined value of almost £400bn.
In a week in which new governments took over the reins in both Westminster and The Hague, I discussed how we can deepen that partnership further still in meetings with the Dutch Banking Association, the Dutch Fund and Asset Management Association (DUFAS), ING, and the asset manager, APG, among others.
But as nations that share many comparable challenges, like rising sea levels, not to mention similar climate ambitions, I was keen to also use the trip as an opportunity to promote the City’s many other areas of expertise – what I like to call the Knowledge Miles of our Square Mile – including in science, tech, and engineering. After all, our knowledge exchange even extends as far as our men’s national football team, with Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink, a former Dutch international, our assistant coach!
We held a roundtable on the future of AI with the Netherlands British Chamber of Commerce, discussed space debris removal insurance bonds with the European Space Agency at the European Space Research and Technology Centre in Noordwijk, and met with the Director General for the Environment and International Affairs to further our work on sustainable finance – all topics at the heart of this year’s mayoral theme, Connect to Prosper.
There is an old Dutch saying, “beter een goede buur dan een verre vriend“ – “better a good neighbour than a distant friend”.
Despite the challenges we have faced with our European partners over recent years, the City will always be a good neighbour, and importantly, a mutually reinforcing friend and financial centre. As my trip to the Netherlands reaffirmed, not even the heartbreak of a football match can change that.
Michael Mainelli is Lord Mayor of Canada