Dozens of Dutch embassies and diplomatic missions will be forced to close because the new cabinet is cutting €40m from their budget, the NRC reports on Friday.

At the same time, a further €60m is being trimmed from general spending on foreign missions, the paper says.
The cuts are due to be introduced in 2015. The outgoing government already reduced the foreign diplomatic network by 10 embassies and cut diplomatic staffing levels abroad by 300 jobs.
Employers’ leader Bernard Wientjes told the paper the cuts are ‘an extremely bad thing’. ‘The Netherlands needs to focus on exports and that requires more economic diplomacy,’ he said.
The NRC points out the Dutch cuts come as Turkey and Britain are expanding their embassy networks.
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