Since shopkeepers and catering bosses in the Netherlands have had to close their doors, many Dutch people are crossing the border. In Belgium they can still shop and go to the pub. But ‘letting that happen is the shortest way to a closure of the catering industry’ here too, Governor Cathy Berx told De Standaard newspaper. “And nobody wants that.”
This is what the Dutch did en masse for Christmas shopping in Antwerp, can be seen in the images below:
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‘Don’t drop down’
“Don’t come down here”, the highest provincial administrator of Antwerp admonishes the northern neighbors. “I ask the Dutch to bite their teeth.” If the feared new omikron variant of the virus turns out to be not too bad, “they are welcome again. But this is not the time to come here,” she tells the Belgian broadcaster VRT.
The city councils of Antwerp and Turnhout, among others, do not see a bone in the extra clientele for their inner cities. They think they can handle the influx and point out that the catering industry is only allowed to receive a fixed number of people.
And shopkeepers, who like to make amends these days after two difficult years, raise their eyebrows at the governor’s call.
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