It has been less than a month since the Netherlands lifted the restrictions. On July 9th, 7.000 new cases developed unexpectedly in less than a day, causing the government to bring back some restrictions on festivals, nightclubs, and bars.
The reason for which these organizations are suing is due to the government giving the “go ahead” with their events after lifting multiple restrictions, but now this changes. The new rules for the events are up until August 13th and state that participants have to be seated and respect a capacity limitation. Because of how these events function, these changes coming this late will mostly cause organizers to postpone or even cancel.
“We are overwhelmed by the support we received from our visitors, artists and partners in the past days. The fact that so many parties in the market are joining us reflects perfectly what the impact is on the entire public events industry.”
RITTY VAN STRAALEN, CEO OF ID&T
“As a large-scale sports event, we deal with a long lead time and large financial risks. For us, it is also inexplicable internationally to not have clarity of the conditions under which we can organize the event three weeks prior to the event. It’s even more disappointing that, despite the good work of Fieldlab Events and the high vaccination rate the Netherlands has achieved, we may not be able to make the event a huge success with the whole world watching.”
IMRE VAN LEEUWEN, MANAGING DIRECTOR AT F1 DUTCH GRAND PRIX ZANDVOORT
Other organizations joining are 24-uurs Solexrace, 4PM Entertainment, A Venue Events, Absolutely Fresh, Apenkooi, Apex Event Productions, BeetjeDansen Events, BZB, Chasing the Hihat, De Wijze Uil, E&A, Elevations Events, Feestfabriek, First Vision, HockeyLoverz, Intents Events, Life Over Future, Minority Events, Nomads, One of the Guys, Par-T, Paaspop, Rebirth Events, Rotterdam Dance Parade, Sensation Events, Sportvibes, Thuishaven Events, Toffler, Trees of Live, UDC, and ZeeZout.
A hearing will take place on July 16th at the court in The Hague. We can only hope that a common solution will be reached and events can take place safely this summer.
