With the Coronavirus guidelines now nearly a month old, one owner didn’t get the message
Translated by Thomas Ansell
On Friday evening a café in Leeuwarden was given a 4,000 euro fine for flaunting the Coronavirus regulations currently in place in the Netherlands. The news was announced by enforcement officers, but due to privacy laws, the identity of the café or its owner has not been publicised. As reported by the Omrop Fryslân.
The police and enforcement officers were working from a tip-off that a café in the Gemeente Leeuwarden had remained open. Upon investigating, it turned out that the tip was correct. The owner of the café was given a fine of 4,350 euros- however people that were in the bar at the time were not given fines, as responsibility for them lay with the owner of the café, say police.
Corné van de Erve is the chair of the Frisian chapter of the national ‘Koninklijke Horeca Nederland’ organization for hotels, restaurants, and cafés. His advice to bars and cafés is clear: don’t copy this case. “Public health must be guaranteed, and all outlets have shut their doors due to government regulations, and we have to keep it this way. Naturally, some entrepreneurs are lost in a maze of advice and legal text, and have chosen to make their own decisions. But we have to keep everyone to the law.”
Image via Wikimedia user Dickelbers. License here.
