For the sake of road safety, Rijkswaterstaat is going to remove farmer’s protest flags — the inverted Dutch flag — from bridges, viaducts and traffic lights. A spokesperson confirms that coverage of RTL News† “It is not allowed to attach flags or banners to government properties without a permit. That has always been the case, only now it is suddenly in the publicity. Whether we agree with the farmers’ protests or not is irrelevant.”
Also read: What does the inverted Dutch flag mean?
The flags and banners hang above and next to highways throughout the country, as a protest against the government’s nitrogen plans. According to Rijkswaterstaat, this is not safe for two reasons. “First of all, it distracts. When you’re in the car, you tend to take a look. Then you don’t pay attention to the road anymore.” Fear of poorly fastened canvases is the second motive. “You really don’t want a flag like that to come loose and end up on a car windshield.”
As far as Rijkswaterstaat is aware, there have been no accidents due to protest flags to date. “But that is difficult to say with certainty: we are not everywhere. We want to be ahead of dangerous situations.” It is not the case that the traffic service is actively looking for flags: only when employees come across them, do they proceed to remove them. In order to avoid “precedent setting”, no distinction is made between safe and unsafe flags, the spokesman said.
The inverted flag was first used in 2019 during farmer demonstrations in The Hague. After that, the symbol appeared last year during demonstrations against the corona policy. It’s a sign that comes from seafaring: an inverted flag used to mean the ship was in distress. The flags have been seen everywhere in the countryside for a month, as a symbol of dissatisfaction with the cabinet’s nitrogen plans.