Benefits To Blame For Brexit: Dutch Minister

The Dutch foreign minister has told Sky News that Britain's benefits system is partly to blame for the defeat and departure of David Cameron because it attracts migrants to the UK.

Bert Koenders was speaking after the six original member countries of the European Union called on the UK to speed up the process of leaving, now that it has voted to leave the EU.

He told Sky's Lisa Holland: "You have relatively low wages and at the same time immediately people get a lot of benefits.

"That attracts a lot of migration. It has nothing to do with Europe. It has to do with your domestic rules and regulations.

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"But we are sometimes living in a time when (if) something goes right, it's national, and when it's wrong, it's Europe."

Mr Koenders' comments come after German Chancellor Angela Merkel said there is no need to be "nasty" during talks to discuss Britain's exit from the EU.

She told a news conference it "shouldn't take forever" for Britain to deliver formal notification that it wants to leave the European Union but made it clear that the matter is in London's hands.

France's foreign minister Jean-Marc Ayrault said it was a "matter of respect" that the UK did not "play cat and mouse" with its soon-to-be-former partners.

Jean-Claude Juncker, the European Commission president, also said there was no reason to wait until David Cameron is replaced in October to begin negotiating Britain's exit.

Mr Juncker said the separation was "not an amicable divorce" and called for discussions to separate the UK from the bloc to begin "immediately".

But Ms Merkel said: "To be honest, it shouldn't take forever, that's right - but I would not fight over a short period of time."

The German leader added that she wanted an "objective, good" climate for in talks on Britain's exit from the EU and that there was no need to make it a priority to deter other countries from attempting to leave the EU as well.

Ms Merkel said that there was "no need to be particularly nasty in any way in the negotiations; they must be conducted properly."

Earlier, it emerged a German government paper has warned that France, Austria, Finland, the Netherlands and Hungary may follow the UK and leave the EU.

The German finance ministry strategy paper expressed concern that the UK's historic vote may trigger a Brexit domino effect across Europe, German newspaper Die Welt said.

It recommended the EU enters into negotiations aimed at making the UK an "associated partner country" for the remaining 27 nations.

As it stands, the UK's exit could cause Germany's contribution to the EU's budget to rise by €3bn (£2.44bn) a year, the paper adds.

The German warning came hours after UKIP leader Nigel Farage declared the "EU is dying" and far-right leaders in France and the Netherlands demanded their own referendums on EU membership.

A number of European nations have started to react in other ways to the vote, with Spain proposing joint sovereignty over Gibraltar, the British Overseas Territory that it shares a land border with.

The French mayor of Calais, meanwhile, says that now the UK is leaving the EU, Britain must renegotiate a deal which allows UK border checks to take place on French soil.