Justice maintains the curfew in the Netherlands

The acting Dutch Prime Minister, Mark Rutte, and the Minister of Health, Hugo de Jonge, this Tuesday in The Hague.SEM VAN DER WAL / EFE

The curfew, the most controversial measure imposed to date by the acting Government of the Netherlands during the pandemic, will remain in force with the support of justice.

This has been decided by the Court of Appeal of The Hague, which has reversed this Friday a ruling issued on February 16 by a court of first instance, which ordered it to be lifted.

In that ruling, the judges argued that a restriction of freedoms could only be done under the laws reserved for national emergencies.

Covid-19 was not, they added, because the authorities considered other options.

The Dutch Executive appealed immediately and has now won, so that the prohibition to go out between 9:00 p.m. and 4:30 a.m. is upheld, until March 15 for now.

Along the way, there remains, yes, the commotion caused by the defeat suffered in the first trial, at the request of a foundation skeptical about the coronavirus.

The group of skeptics is called Viruswaardheid (The truth about the virus) and its visible head is Willem Engel, a dance teacher who studied Biopharmacy and who does not deny that there are patients, but it seems to him that the pandemic has been exaggerated.

For this reason, he says that maintaining physical distance, washing hands and wearing a mask are useless.

This Friday, with the appeal ruling in hand, he said that they plan to reach the Supreme Court because what happened responds "to a political theater that has nothing to do with the independence of the courts."

In the Netherlands, a curfew can only be applied in emergencies, such as a natural disaster or war, and has not been imposed since World War II.

In order for it to be legal, it is necessary to invoke the law of Extraordinary Powers of the Civil Authority, but the Government, which resigned last January due to a scandal of subsidies to families, only asked for the endorsement of Congress, considering that the increase in infections was already a national emergency.

Members of Viruswaardheid took advantage of this loophole, and the first judges agreed with them.

The appeal ruling, however, considers that the curfew was not imposed under erroneous legal concepts, "because we are facing extraordinary circumstances, the pandemic, which allows a temporary restriction of freedoms to be applied."

The magistrates add this example to illustrate the situation: "If a dam is about to break, it cannot be expected."

Given the legal mess it had gotten into, the Government last Friday secured the support of Parliament to sustain the curfew with the approval of a new Emergency law that supports the temporary limitation of going out to the street during the covid- 19.

The curfew has been in force since last January 23, and has been prolonged due to the increase in infections.

Two days later, a series of riots broke out across the country, which Acting Prime Minister Mark Rutte called "criminal violence."

Shops were looted, containers were burned and cobblestones were thrown, and the judges imposed sentences of several months in prison on the detainees.

Among them were far-rightists, deniers, professional agitators and many young people without political affiliation.