Dutch republicans have a message for the Netherlands' Crown Prince Willem-Alexander, who will become king when his mother Queen Beatrix abdicates at the end of April: you're not worth it, foreign media said.

Hans Maessen of the New Republican Fellowship - which seeks to abolish the monarchy - said his organisation is launching a petition to have the new king's annual salary of 825,000 euro (£704,000) lowered to 150,000 euros, bringing it into line with the prime minister's wages.

"If you look at the demands of the job, it's totally out of proportion," Maessen said.

The Dutch monarch earns more than twice the salary of the president of the United States, four times that of the president of Germany, and five times that of the king of Spain or the Dutch prime minister.

If the petition gets 40,000 signatures, Parliament will debate it.