Amsterdam to ban cruise ships from city centre in latest crackdown on overtourism

Published

2 years ago

July 21, 2023

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Amsterdam has banned cruise ships from docking in the city centre in its latest attempt to cut tourism and pollution.

Politicians in the Dutch capital said cruise ships were “incompatible” with their sustainability ambitions for the city, which, despite its relatively small size, is one of the most visited in Europe.

It comes after the Dutch capital launched a “stay away” campaign in March in a bid to deter people – particularly young British men – from choosing the city as a party and stag-do destination.

In February, the council also banned people from smoking cannabis in the streets of the city’s famous red-light district and ordered bars and restaurants to shut by 2am on Fridays and Saturdays.

The cruise ship ban will result in the closure of the city’s central terminal on the River IJ, near Amsterdam’s main train station.

The proposal was adopted by a large majority of the city’s council, which is run by a coalition of the centrist Democrats 66 party (D66), the social democratic PvdA and the GroenLinks environmentalists.

D66 politician Ilana Rooderkerk, who compared cruise passengers to a “plague of locust” in an opinion piece last month, said Amsterdam would “sail better” without cruise ships.

“The polluting cruise is not in line with Amsterdam’s sustainable ambitions,” she wrote on Twitter.

“Cruise ships in the city centre also do not fit in with the task of combating mass tourism.”

Her party said plans to build a new bridge between Amsterdam’s historic southern district and the Noord district would also be impossible if cruise ships were allowed to continue docking in the city centre.

Alternative sites from cruise ships have been considered, though no decision has yet been made on where it could be placed.

Mayor Femke Halsema, from the GroenLinks party, complained about cruise ship passengers in an interview with Dutch media in November.

She said that they did not benefit the city’s residents because they only visited for a “couple of hours”, ate meals at “international brands” and had “little time” to visit museums.

Ms Halsema, the city’s first female mayor, has been the face of Amsterdam’s campaign to clean up its streets, which welcome up to 22 million tourists each year, despite the city’s relatively small size.

Its reputation as a party city, with its cannabis cafes and historic red-light district, has led it to become a popular destination for stag-dos.

In a wide-ranging interview with Bloomberg last year, she said: “Amsterdam welcomes 22 million tourists per year, and that’s a little bit too much.

“It’s not a form of tourism we welcome or don’t welcome – it’s a form of behaviour. What we do not welcome is people who come here on a vacation from morals.

“It’s a place where you should go if you’re looking for beautiful museums, or to see the underground culture, or if you want to attend our Pride.”

Amsterdam is not the first European city to ban cruise ships from its city centre.

Venice banned cruise ships from its city centre in April 2021, following a request from UN cultural body Unesco.

While Barcelona has not outright banned cruise ships, it has made efforts to limit the number arriving in its docks.

It wants to cut the number of cruise tourists from 400,000 per month to 200,000.

World

Israel’s PM tries to get on front foot in propaganda war he knows he is losing

Published

4 hours ago

August 11, 2025

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Israel's PM tries to get on front foot in propaganda war he knows he is losing

Israel’s prime minister added more detail to his deeply controversial plans for military escalation in Gaza at a news conference with foreign media yesterday – despite the condemnation of the UN Security Council, which met in an emergency session and urged him to rethink.

Benjamin Netanyahu spoke of a “fairly short timetable” to establish designated “safe zones” for the one million or so set to be displaced from Gaza City.

He also vowed to seize and dismantle Hamas’s final strongholds there – in the central refugee camps, and in al Mawasi, along Gaza’s southwestern coast.

This, per Netanyahu, is the only way to destroy the terror group, which he claimed “subjugates Gazans, steals their food and shoots them when they try to move to safety”.

Al Mawasi is already home to a significant displaced population, most of whom live in tents cramped up against the Mediterranean Sea, in what is already a designated humanitarian zone.

If members of Hamas live among them, rooting them out will be hugely complicated and will involve significant civilian casualties. If the residents of Gaza City can’t evacuate south to al Mawasi, where will they go?

Netanyahu’s plan is to set up more aid distribution sites through the controversial Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) and to flood Gaza with food.

He claimed his policy was not one of forced starvation – describing particular photos of starving babies as “fake news”, and accusing the media of painting a false picture.

“The only ones who are being deliberately starved in Gaza are our hostages,” the prime minister claimed.

I asked Netanyahu how he would go about preventing the kinds of daily killings taking place at aid distribution points in the months since GHF has been operating.

Doctors Without Borders has described these incidents as deliberately orchestrated.

The prime minister said increasing the amount of aid heading into the Strip was the answer.

“And by the way, a lot of the firing was done by Hamas seeking to have a response by our forces,” he added. “And very often they didn’t, they held back. They stayed their own fire even though their own lives were on the line.”

This was Israel’s prime minister trying to get on the front foot in a propaganda war he acknowledged he was losing. He was loath to admit the presence of famine in Gaza.

It took two questions before he acknowledged there was “deprivation”, even if he would not be drawn on whether his 11-week total blockade of the strip earlier this year had played any role.

He recognises that the appalled response of the international community to the human cost of this war, and the accusations of war crimes and genocide which Israel so vehemently rejects, are a terrible look.

This was his attempt to reclaim the narrative.

World

Defiant Netanyahu sets out plan for military escalation in Gaza – and describes photographs of starving babies as ‘fake news’

Published

10 hours ago

August 10, 2025