Privacy First summary proceedings against license plate parking

Amsterdam municipality ignores Supreme Court ruling. Privacy First intervenes.

Early this year judged the Supreme Court that parkers are not required to enter their license plates when parking. Nevertheless, parking meters in Amsterdam (and many other municipalities) still state that entering the license plate is mandatory. Those who do not enter their license plate but do pay will still receive a parking fine. True, that parking fine can then be annulled, but that requires a cumbersome procedure.

The Amsterdam municipality is thus not only violating the law, but is also guilty of abuse of power by burdening parkers with unnecessary costs and procedures.

Privacy First has considered license plate parking legally untenable for years. And with success: in 2015 won Privacy First chairman Bas Filippini filed a lawsuit against license plate parking. This judgment was subsequently upheld by the Supreme Court. Nevertheless, our chairman received another parking fine this year after refusing to enter his license plate number for privacy reasons. For him, that was enough, and there was no other option than to initiate summary proceedings to have license plate parking permanently abolished.

Today, these summary proceedings were held at the Amsterdam District Court. Our lawyer Benito Boer argued at length that the municipality of Amsterdam was flouting the right to privacy with license plate parking. Every day, anyone who wants to park anonymously runs the risk of being wrongly fined. This situation cannot continue any longer.

Click HERE for our subpoena and HERE for our pleading. Prior to the hearing, the municipality of Amsterdam had not submitted a defence. Even during the hearing, the municipality's lawyer did not offer any cogent rebuttal.

In two weeks' time (September 21), the judge will issue a written ruling. Privacy First views the verdict with confidence.

Update 21 September 2016: Against all odds, the judge unfortunately dismissed the case today rejected. Privacy First considers this verdict completely wrong and is considering further legal action.

Update 4 October 2016: on September 21 last. certain the Amsterdam summary proceedings judge that license plate parking would not violate the right to privacy and Supreme Court case law. Privacy First considers this extremely disappointing and incomprehensible. This week, therefore, our chairman has had a summons for accelerated appeal (urgent appeal) served on the municipality of Amsterdam; click HERE for the entire document (pdf). Indeed, Amsterdam (and other municipalities) are wrongly viewing the short-court ruling as a 'green light' for kentekenparkeren. However, mandatory license plate parking continues to trample the right to anonymity in public spaces. Privacy First considers this situation to be an abuse of power (see also our motivation in the summons to the urgent appeal, p. 3). It is up to the court to correct this situation as yet. Privacy First therefore hopes that the Amsterdam Court of Appeal will hear the case in the near future.

Update 17 January 2017: the court hearing in our emergency appeal to the Amsterdam Court of Appeal is now scheduled for Thursday 16 March at 9.30am. Everyone is welcome to attend the court hearing.