Amsterdam residents to court over EuroPride disturbances

A group of Amsterdam residents are going to court on Tuesday over disturbances, nuisance and inconvenience they expect will be caused by EuroPride 2016, which starts in the Dutch capital on Saturday, Het Parool reports. The resident associations previously also expressed their concerns and announced their intention to turn to court. This resulted in consultations with Mayor Eberhard van der Laan and the event organizers. Additional measures were taken to ease the residents' concerns, such as extra enforcers, closing the Prinsengracht longer, extra toilets to avoid public urinating, regular cleanups and a promise that the city will be clean again 24 hours after the event. But most of the resident associations find these measures "very disappointing". According to them, their main complaint - noise - is being ignored. The municipality is deploying more enforcers to make sure noise standards are not exceeded, but nothing is being done to the volume itself. If the municipality really listened to them, EuroPride would not have gotten a permit, according to the associations. On Tuesday the associations will ask the court to resolve their main complaints before the event starts on Saturday. The municipality stated that they regret "that the many discussions did not lead to confidence that the municipality of Amsterdam pays enough attention to your interests."