Anyone driving through Dalen or Oosterhesselen today can hardly have missed it: the inverted flags are still hanging everywhere. And that while the municipality said last week that they all had to leave for today.
Last week, a tour of all Drenthe municipalities showed that the lion’s share believes that the Dutch tricolor should simply remain inverted. Flags have been hung in several places as a protest against the government’s nitrogen plans.
Only Meppel and Coevorden thought that the flags should be removed by the 15th at the latest. The incompatibility with the Indies commemoration was one of the arguments. Coevorden went one step further: unlike other municipalities, the flags are not allowed to return after today.
The municipality of Coevorden assumed that the farmers would heed the call. Enforcement actions were therefore not planned. A spokesman for the municipality says that there will not be any for the time being. “We discussed this this morning. We have decided to first discuss this with the farmers. We are not going to remove them immediately, no.”
When asked whether the fist is raised during those conversations, the spokesperson answers that the ‘certainty’ has not disappeared from the municipality. “But we’ve always had good contact with the farmers. That’s why we’re going to talk first.”