The reason for the debate on the fireworks ban that has been held in recent times is the violence with fireworks that the police and other emergency services are confronted with during the New Year’s Eve. This is increasingly characterized by boundless behavior and lawlessness among a part of the population. Police and emergency services are often the target of aggression and violence with fireworks. The police are not only bombarded with heavily banned fireworks but also with consumer fireworks, the consequences of which can be just as severe. During the last New Year’s Eve, 295 police officers and 44 emergency workers were victims of aggression and violence.
To tackle this deep-rooted problem, the police have strongly advocated for a complete fireworks ban as a necessary first step to make the New Year’s Eve safer. Combined with an unwavering effort to remove fireworks explosives from the streets through detection and making agreements with our neighboring countries and European regulations, according to Tolga Koklu, national portfolio holder in the approach against fireworks explosives. Throughout the year, we are confronted with problems of both consumer fireworks and heavily illegal fireworks. Think of attacks with explosions, bombardments during riots and demonstrations, and the storage of fireworks explosives in residential areas. A fireworks ban is therefore not a standalone measure but a prerequisite to effectively tackle the fireworks problem and achieve a safer New Year’s Eve.
Police officers on the street no longer need to distinguish between different types of fireworks in the event of a complete ban. Moreover, the availability of fireworks decreases because consumer fireworks are no longer available around the corner. The threshold for using fireworks as a weapon against police and emergency services becomes significantly higher. This creates a clear situation in which we can responsibly send our colleagues out onto the streets to ensure a safe New Year’s Eve. We know that this measure hurts a part of the population, even though more than 60 percent support a fireworks ban, but those few hours of pleasure do not outweigh the suffering that is increasingly caused as a result of fireworks. To citizens and to emergency workers. With a ban as a starting point, we can also as an employer allow our colleagues on the street to do their work in a safer manner.
Simply enforcing through police deployment is not the key to success in implementing a complete ban, Koklu states. We are working on a concrete enforcement plan in which we will have to collaborate with municipalities and other partners. A ban must also be embraced by society to truly achieve a safer New Year’s Eve. Many people will have to get used to it, and the support will therefore slowly grow. Our effort will certainly still be significant in the first years, although the expectation is that due to the sales ban, less fireworks will be in circulation, allowing for more targeted enforcement against the so-called troublemakers.
Fight Against Illegal Fireworks
The police are unwaveringly focused on removing fireworks explosives from the streets as much as possible. At the operational level, we work closely with colleagues from Belgium and Germany to track down large and small quantities of fireworks that are illegally brought into our country. Not only are concrete investigations conducted together to search for illegal fireworks, but random border controls are also carried out, and there is active searching on social media. In the detection of illegally traded fireworks, we closely collaborate with partners such as Customs, the Royal Marechaussee, and the Environment and Transport Inspectorate.
International Cooperation
To tackle the problem of heavy fireworks at the source, we work in a European context with other countries to come up with stricter measures regarding the production, trading, and possession of heavy fireworks. This has led to the topic being on the European agenda and is now actively being addressed by the European Commission.