Police were ready and supermarkets closed their doors, but on Tuesday evening it was unclear if a controversial curfew in the Netherlands would be respected. Earlier in the day, a court ruled that the legal basis for the curfew was invalid: it rests on a particular type of emergency ruling when instead it should have gone to a vote in the lower house.
This was, ruled the court in the Hague, ‘absolutely not’ the kind of situation for which the emergency law was intended, such as the breach of a dyke. Meanwhile, the court said the 9 p.m. to 4.30 a.m. curfew, which sparked nationwide hooliganism and riots after it was introduced in late January, constituted an ‘extreme breach’ of freedoms enshrined in Dutch law.
Willem Engel, chairman of a virus sceptic group now called Viruswaarheid (virus truth) which brought the case, told the broadcaster NOS that he expected people to be ‘out merrymaking’ in the streets.
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