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watje
about trance
 vrijdag 28 maart 2003
The Belgian parliament passed a bill yesterday. Not much fuss was made about it, until it got picked up by the Belgian party sites. What the bill intends to do is impose mandatory closing hours for clubs between 6AM and 2PM. Now that might sound odd from where you are coming, but we are used to clubbing until way past the brake of dawn.
One of my main annoyances with the bill is the reasons why they want to write this law. Apart from the usual drug blabber, the most important reason is to deal with the criminality alongside the Belgian-French border. Which is a problem that's only marginally related to a few clubs in that region.
Though they have left room for exceptions to be made by local authorities, it is highly unlikely (in my opinion) that these will happily make exceptions to the general rule. At the very least (we're thinking best case scenario in a very optimistic world here), this is just a bunch of extra red tape for club owners.
It's time to act. For starters go sign the dance4mation petition. I'll try to obtain the e-mail addresses of the politicians behind this bill so you can tell them what you think about it. Here are their names:
- D'hondt Denis (MR)
- Leterme Yves (CD&V)
- Lahaye Martial (VLD)
- Detremmerie Jean-Pierre (CDH)
- Harmegnies Yvon (PS)
The bill is here (only in Dutch and French I'm afraid). If you're interested you can use the data in the history section there to find the reports of the parliamentary session. I was disgusted at the way they seem to think about clubbers.
8:17:03 PM 
© 2003 Peter Backx
Last Update: 1/04/2003; 21:26:38
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