Vrytaal

Brexit is spelling the end of English as an official EU language, yet English is still widespread as lingua franca. In the spirit of choosing small countries as the base for powerful institutions, perhaps Dutch should replace English as the European lingua franca. Or rather: A modified version of Dutch with simplified grammar, pronunciation and spelling like Afrikaans. Afrikaans is already among those languages that are easiest to learn for people already speaking English, so it makes sense to opt for this as an alternative. In analogy, the name of this new language could be "Europees", but a more general term is "Vrytaal", which literally means "lingua franca".

Writing System
Pronunciation should follow spelling as precisely as possible, as e.g. in Finnish. At the same time, the language should avoid sounds that are generally hard to pronounce and learn for Europeans with different native languages. For instance the typical Dutch pronunciation of the letter 'g' as an uvular fricative is replaced with the more common pronunciation as a voiced velar stop, though velar and uvular fricatives are acceptable as variations or accents of the common language. Also, diphthongues are generally avoided and replaced with single letters fusing similar pronunciations. For instance, the Dutch digraph "ij" is replaced by "y", as it is in Afrikaans, and both its pronunciation as /aɪ/ and as /ɛi/ are accepted as variations/accents.