(The Hague) Amsterdam City Council on Thursday passed a motion to close a major cruise ship terminal in its city center, the city confirmed to AFP on Thursday.
The decision adds to a long list of measures recently taken by Amsterdam to combat mass tourism.
The cruise ship motion was adopted, a source from the town told AFP, adding that the exact result of the vote, votes for and against, has not yet been made public.
“Dirty cruises do not match our city’s sustainable ambitions,” the centre-liberal D66 party behind the motion, which leads the city alongside social democrats PvdA and environmentalists GroenLinks, said in a statement.
The D66 also mentions the incompatibility of the passage of cruise ships with “the construction of a second bridge over the IJ towards the Noord district”.
The southern part of Amsterdam, made up of its historic center, and its northern part, long less developed and in recent years the subject of major modernization projects, are separated by the IJ, a former sea arm transformed into a vast artificial lake.
Plans to build one or more additional bridges to connect Amsterdam-Noord to the rest of the city have been under discussion for several years.
“Many cruise passengers are dropped for a few hours and eat meals at international brands, which has little impact on the middle class,” Amsterdam Mayor Femke Halsema (GroenLinks) said in November during an interview with Dutch newspaper NRC, adding that these tourists had “little time” to visit museums.
The municipality of the country’s largest city has implemented several measures in recent months aimed at restoring peace to the inhabitants of its historic center, such as a ban on smoking cannabis in the streets of its red light district and the launch of a campaign to dissuade British tourists from traveling to Amsterdam only to consume alcohol and drugs.
