Blue in the face: Dutch businesses heed furry Brexit monster

A furry blue monster aimed at spurring companies in the Netherlands to take Brexit seriously may look slightly odd but seems to be doing a good job, the Dutch government has said.

The enormous Muppet-like creature, unveiled in a tweet last week showing it sprawling unhelpfully across the desk of the foreign minister, Stef Blok, had prompted 10 times more companies to take an official “Brexit scan”, the foreign affairs ministry said.

A spokesman said on Tuesday that on the day Blok launched the campaign, 6,832 companies assessed the impact upon their businesses of Britain’s forthcoming departure from the EU at the brexitloket.nl website, compared with 691 the previous day.

Nearly 70,000 Dutch companies have taken the scan since the site was set up in March last year, the spokesman said – including 11,000 in the past week, since Blok’s tweet.

“I won’t comment on the monster’s shape or colour or anything like that,” the spokesman said. “But suffice it to say we are using a little bit of humour to convey a serious message.”

The minister’s tweet showed him standing behind his desk, his arms raised in mock frustration at being unable to work. “Have you checked what consequences Brexit has for your company?” he said. “Make sure Brexit doesn’t get – or lie – in your way.”

The Netherlands, for whom the UK is a major trading partner, is among the best-prepared of all the EU27 for Brexit, but the government has said it is still concerned too few Dutch businesses are aware of the consequences of trading with a “third country”, as Britain will become if it leaves without a deal on 29 March.

Its public information campaign includes newspaper ads and radio jingles telling businesses they cannot afford to be taken by surprise and will have to be creative in their approach to potential problems.

Products will probably be held up for longer at customs, UK-issued certificates and licences may no longer be valid, and data transfers could be affected, the campaign says.

Other images show the Brexit monster physically frustrating Dutch businesses by, for example, getting in the way of trucks.