The mayor's stubborn battle for an Erotic Center in Amsterdam
A weird hill to die on. Plus: a potential asylum disaster, and the Queen of the Netherlands starts to woo me
Stay Away from Amsterdam
Starting this week, people in the UK googling “stag party Amsterdam”, “cheap hotel Amsterdam” or “pub crawl Amsterdam” will be served the godawful ad below.
“I can't imagine that even one British tourist dares to come to Amsterdam after this video”
The ad is one of Amsterdam’s many new attempts to reduce “nuisance tourism” in the Red Light District - mainly caused by young Dutch and British men who go on benders and literally poop and pee in residential doorways on de Wallen.
New regulations that take aim at reducing access to drugs and alcohol in the city center make a lot of sense. As of mid-May, you can no longer smoke joints in the street, bars will close at 2:00 rather than 4:00, and the sale of alcohol in shops will be restricted. These regulations are designed, according Amsterdam mayor Femke Halsema, to change Amsterdam’s international image as hedonistic free-for-all.
New regulations restricting sex work make less sense. As of April 1, sex worker’s windows on de Wallen must close by 3:00, three hours earlier than before. Sex workers are vociferously opposed to this change. Halsema also wants to open a “erotic center” - basically a sex mall with 100 sex workers - outside of the city center, in Zuid or Noord; this week she clashed hard with residents at community meetings in both neighborhoods. Sex workers also hate this idea.
“You fuck in the Red Light District” - a sign near the proposed erotic center location in Noord.
It seems like Halsema will move forward with the erotic center despite objections from all sides, as she said at the community meeting in Zuid:
A questioner: "What can we do to get you to listen? We don't want the center here or in Noord."
Halsema: "I’m listening to you, but it doesn't mean that you always get what you want."
Continued: “We are not being heard.”
Halsema: “I am standing here.”
I think she’s betting that taking action against tourism in the center will ultimately be a political win citywide - who cares if the people actually effected don’t want it? When opponents are sex workers and residents of two outer Amsterdam neighborhoods most Amsterdammers don’t visit often, it must be pretty easy to hear what they have to say while remaining determined not to listen to any of it. And her stubbornness on this issue might score her points with voters who see her in a new light, as determined and tough.
I don’t like the restrictions on sex work. To me, implicit in them is the idea that presence of sex workers somehow incites nuisance tourism. It shifts the blames for the conditions on the street to the women in the windows when it lies with no one but the men taking the shits.
The decision about the erotic center is ultimately up to the city council. As much as Halsema might like to plow ahead, it will require a coalition agreement with parties in the government - if not residents and workers.
Thanks for reading Dutch Deadline!
Our Blinged-Out Queen Stands Against Bling
This week, Dutch Queen Máxima, who makes a 1.1 million euros annually on which she is constitutionally exempted from paying taxes unlike anyone else in the country except her family (!) - participated in the opening of the “Restrain the Bling” (Bedwing de Bling) program of Money Week, a period when primary and secondary school children are educated on money management, spending, and how not to be seduced by smartphone offers and ads.
This kind of thing makes me crazy. Maybe it’s being an American. We fought the Revolutionary War against a monarch, etc.
But… then… I read this column where Marcel van Roosmalen describes watching a news broadcast about Máxima’s involvement in the program with his children.
“They want to win the hearts of the people through children's wallets,” I said. Two pairs of children's eyes full of question marks looked at me. “I hate it when people with unlimited cash flow advise us not to fall into financial traps.” “Daddy”, said Lucie van Roosmalen (7), “shut up.” I shut up and watched as a room full of children cheered for the message that you grow financially healthy citizens by practicing saving from an early age.
The Dutch argument in favor of the royals typically goes like this: the Netherlands is a small country and the royals can use their fame and impressiveness to advance Dutch interests worldwide in ways that politicians or Dutch celebrities cannot. And in a country with relatively low nationalistic impulses (try telling a Dutch person how great something about their political system is compared to things America, for example, and they tend to automatically disagree), they reinforce the Dutch national identity.
Maybe there’s something to that, if queen uses her queenyness to do things like rally children around responsible money management.
Or maybe I’ve just been living here too long. (7 years in June.)
I still think she should pay taxes. 😤
40,000 asylum seekers with nowhere to go
The Netherlands could be short 40,000 beds for asylum seekers this year.
The Asylum Distribution Act - which would provide housing for asylum seekers across the Netherlands by forcing municipalities to open reception centers - made it to the Tweede Kamer this week. The law, intended to reduce the pressure on the overcrowded Ter Apel reception center - where the situation got so bad last summer that Doctors Without Borders deployed to the Netherlands to provide care - at this point would not take effect until 2024.
Once the Distribution Act takes effect, municipalities would be granted three months to voluntarily build reception locations. If not enough municipalities volunteer, the government will then start forcing construction. Meaning: the completion of forced reception centers would not realistically be completed until next summer. Maybe later.
After last summer’s crisis in Ter Apel, municipalities added thousands of temporary reception spaces with suboptimal living conditions: like cruise ships, gymnasiums, and hotels.
As of February, only eight percent of municipalities intended to extend reception locations once their temporary commitment is over. Thirty-five locations, like the cruise ship in Velsen-Noord currently housing 1,000 people, are expected to shut down between now and June 1. Only twenty-three percent of municipalities are currently planning to open a permanent shelter.
Which means that between now and whenever the Distribution Act might take effect, the Netherlands will be at least 40,000 reception places short. Or maybe 75,000, depending on how many more come this summer.
Also reported this week: the cost for asylum this year will be three billion euros more than budgeted. And despite this massive spending, residents of Dutch asylum centers still have insufficient medical care.
💡 Asylum seekers in the Netherlands have the legal right to access to healthcare and housing in a reception center for the duration of their asylum procedure.
Are we headed for another summer of more people than ever sleeping outside reception centers? It appears that no one has a plan, and for the time being, the government has no legal power to act.
Aside from being inhumane, a repeat of last summer’s Ter Apel situation could be politically consequential: the left will complain that the mismanaged government is incapable of fulfilling its obligations to asylum seekers, and the right-wing will use it as “proof” that the Netherlands is overrun by migrants.
🥳 Leuke Dingetjes
A new album from Pitou
A kind of pop that is as controlled as it is sensitive, in which you hear folk and classical music, like Julia Holter…. an album of veiled, subtle percussion, tastefully baroque colored by the Baroque Orchestration X, with strings or harp here and there. - Volkskrant
Mark Rutte in a Dope Pope Coat
It doesn’t really look like him but, you know. AI isn’t perfect.
A driver’s driver is a private jet
Reported this week: Formula 1 driver Max Verstappen traveled 164,126 kilometers by private jet in nine months.
Including the 25 kilometers from Nice to Cannes.
Maybe the women and children are the problem
A sex worker from Bulgaria has an innovative policy idea.
They could set restrictions. Like, no women and children on the street after eight o'clock in the evening. So that it's only for the men and it's less crowded. AT5
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Can't believe the royal fam doesn't pay tax
!!! 😳😳😳