Monday 23 / June / 2025
The Netherlands' Health Minister Ernst Kuipers on Tuesday announced that the government will drop nearly all coronavirus restrictions in the country by February 25, as infections, hospitalizations and deaths from COVID-19 have dropped significantly.
"The country will open again," Kuipers told reporters at a press conference in The Hague. "We will go back to normal closing times."
The minister also said social distancing measures would become a thing of the past and noted: "Masks are only obligatory on public transport and in the airport. Keeping your distance and wearing a mask remain sensible, but there is no obligation."
Nevertheless, Kuipers was quick to add that the pandemic was still not entirely over and that vulnerable citizens needed to remain vigilant.
The Netherlands had previously imposed some of the toughest coronavirus restrictions in the EU, especially in the wake of a surge in infections with the advent of the highly contagious omicron strain in December.
In both January and November of 2021, police clashed with rioters looting and violently protesting restrictions. The riots raged for days in each case, with property damage, hundreds of arrests and injuries to both police and protesters.
With the lifting of restrictions, bars, restaurants and clubs will return to normal pre-pandemic opening hours and most social distancing and mask restrictions will be dropped.
The World Health Organization has warned that Eastern Europe is about to be hit by a new wave of the omicron variant.
Over the past two weeks, cases of COVID-19 have more than doubled in Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Russia and Ukraine, WHO's Europe regional director Dr. Hans Kluge said in a statement.
