A decision to move cafes selling cannabis out of the centre of the Dutch city of Maastricht to an industrial estate near the Belgian border has provoked an angry response from five adjacent Belgian towns – one of which has threatened to close its cross-border roads.
The move to an industrial park at Eijsden was given the go-ahead by the Supreme Court in The Hague on Wednesday, as a compromise in a bitter row between the mayor of Maastricht, Onno Hoes, a stalwart of prime minister Mark Rutte's Liberal Party, and coffee shop owners.
Mr Hoes claims the 1.6 million foreign “drugs tourists” who visit the city’s 13 licensed coffee shops every year are “an unacceptable nuisance” and should be barred by the cafe owners in line with a recently introduced law that has been widely ignored elsewhere, including in Amsterdam. The owners say banning foreigners would devastate their businesses, have a detrimental effect on the local economy and lead to an increase in illegal street dealing – although some of the largest did agree to move to the outskirts to defuse the confrontation with the mayor.
Five Belgian border towns – Voeren, Riemst, Blegny, Visé and Lanaken – made representations to the court on the grounds they believed Maastricht was solving its problem simply by moving the nuisance closer to them – but were told they had “no direct interest” in the case.
That has provoked the mayor of Voeren, Huub Broers, whose town runs right up to the Dutch border, to warn that he plans to make life difficult for the three coffee shops due to move to Eijsden immediately, and for any customers who may plan to pass through his municipality.
In particular, Mr Broers says that under EU law he has the power to close cross-border roads in response to circumstances he deems to pose “a risk” – and that’s a power he may be forced to use for the first time.
