Officers will not be checking up on every household over the Christmas holidays, according to the National Police, but in extreme cases of parties breaking coronavirus regulations, they will step in.
While a maximum of three guests will be permitted at your Dutch dinner this Christmas, officers “don’t intend to peek through all the curtains” to check up on this, a spokesman says. (Not that the Dutch ever use their curtains.) “Moreover, a group of ten people can also be a household,” the spokesperson went on.
Illegal parties
Instead, police attention will be directed to parties going excessively over the limits, for example, “twenty people…dancing in the living room”, reports NU.
But even then, police cannot just barge in. “Permission must be requested from the public prosecutor for this. So we cannot just enter a living room to hand out fines,” a spokesperson explained.
Additional pressure
With the hard lockdown and fireworks ban, the main task for police this year will be to maintain public order. Tracking smaller gatherings will therefore not be a high priority for officers. “But if the pressure allows it, we will, of course, maintain it.”
Different police approaches
However, in different municipalities, what is defined as ‘excess’ may differ. For example, Police Chief Wilbert Paulissen (East Brabant) commented that he could accept no more than ten people gathering on New Year’s Eve. “Then we will really ring the bell,” Paulissen told the Eindhovens Dagblad.
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