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The Netherlands’ economy is proving resilient in the face of global uncertainty, but ordinary households are likely to have a little less to spend next year. That is the message from the latest forecast by the Central Planning Bureau (CPB), the government’s independent economic advisory body.

Growth holds up

Despite considerable turmoil in the wider world, the Dutch economy is still expected to grow, by 1.4 percent this year and 1.2 percent in 2027, after 1.6 percent in 2025. “The Dutch economy is resilient,” said CPB director Pieter Hasekamp, adding that, given everything happening in the world, the consequences are relatively mild.

That growth rests on several supports: strong exports, higher government spending, and the financial buffers that households built up in recent years. The machine industry is benefiting from demand from the chip sector and from investment linked to artificial intelligence, and domestic tourism is helping too. Unemployment remains low, edging up only slightly from 3.9 to 4.0 percent of the labour force. The drought, for now, is having little effect, though the CPB notes that a prolonged dry spell and problems with energy production could weigh on growth later.

But spending power dips

The less welcome news is about purchasing power, the measure of what households can actually afford once wages, taxes, benefits and rising prices are taken together. After increases of 1.0 percent in 2025 and 0.6 percent this year, the spending power of the median, or typical, household is projected to fall by 0.3 percent in 2027.

It is worth being clear about what that figure is. It is a projection based on current policy remaining unchanged, not a fixed cut, and purchasing power is a calculation, spread through the year across the supermarket till, the energy bill and other fixed costs, rather than a single deduction. The main reason for the downgrade is that inflation is proving more stubborn than previously assumed. The CPB expects prices to stay near 3 percent, at 3.3 percent this year and 2.8 percent next, with higher energy and fuel prices, linked in part to conflict in the Middle East, doing much of the work. Food and other goods become more expensive as a result.

Poverty is expected to move with these trends. It falls this year, from 3.0 to 2.6 percent of the population, but is projected to rise again slightly to 2.7 percent in 2027, as the effect of wage growth and government measures wears off towards the end of the forecast period. The number of children living in poverty, however, is expected to keep falling.

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Why this forecast matters now

The timing is significant. This forecast, the concept Macro Economic Outlook, is treated as the starting point for the negotiations between political parties over the national budget, which will be presented on the third Tuesday of September, known as Prinsjesdag. The current minority government will need support from opposition parties to get its plans through.

The finance minister, Eelco Heinen, called drawing up the budget a “nervous” process, saying the margins are small and that he wants to present plans that can command broad support, while acknowledging that “does not mean it is easy”. There is a little room to work with: the government deficit is forecast at close to 3 percent of GDP this year, near the European ceiling, before falling to 2.1 percent in 2027. Government finances are under pressure from rising spending on defence, social security and interest.

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The CPB’s advice

The forecaster also offered a clear piece of guidance for the budget talks. If the government wants to shield people from high energy prices, the CPB argues, it should focus on the most vulnerable households, those on low incomes, particularly in poorly insulated homes, rather than spreading support across everyone. Broad measures that protect all households from price rises, it repeats, are unwise; better, it suggests, to help lower-income families with a badly insulated home to make it more energy efficient.

The CPB stresses that its projections are model-based calculations, not exact predictions, and the final Macro Economic Outlook will be published on Prinsjesdag alongside the government’s budget. For now, the headline is a familiar Dutch balance: an economy that keeps ticking over, and households that, next year, may find their money does not stretch quite as far.

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Two people have died and six others have been injured in a crash on the A59 motorway in the southern Netherlands on Friday morning, in a traffic jam that had formed as farmers drove tractors towards a protest in Den Bosch. The deaths cast a shadow over a day of demonstrations against the government’s nitrogen policy.

The crash

The collision happened near Heesch, in the province of Noord-Brabant, and involved four cars. According to the police, two people were killed and six were injured. The ANWB motoring organisation said the crash occurred at the tail of a tailback that had built up because large numbers of tractors were on the roads, heading to the farmers’ protest at the provincial government building in Den Bosch.

The motorway was fully closed while emergency services worked at the scene and investigators examined what had happened, with police expecting to reopen it later in the afternoon. The cause of the crash is still under investigation, and nothing has yet been released about the identities of the victims. Tractors are not allowed on motorways, and reporting noted that they had been driving in the right-hand lane while other traffic passed on the left; even so, a tailback formed, and the fatal collision happened at the back of it.

Why the farmers were protesting

The protest that drew the tractors to Den Bosch is the latest flashpoint in one of the most divisive issues in Dutch politics. The provincial executive of Noord-Brabant intends to withdraw the permits of five poultry farms, because they emit too much nitrogen, which settles in nearby protected nature areas such as the Peel, and because the province considers their plans to cut those emissions inadequate. The withdrawal is not yet final.

The move has alarmed the wider farming community, many of whom fear that their own permits could be next. Provincial politicians cut short their summer recess to hold an emergency debate on the plans, at the request of several opposition parties. Hundreds of farmers gathered outside, some estimates pointing to a much larger turnout over the day, summoned by farming organisations including LTO, the regional ZLTO and the activist group Farmers Defence Force. Banners carried slogans such as “No farmers, no food” and “A permit is a permit”, and BBB leader Caroline van der Plas joined the demonstration.

Nitrogen policy has fuelled years of farmers’ protests in the Netherlands, driven by the tension between the country’s legal obligation to reduce nitrogen emissions that damage protected nature, and the impact of those measures on farms. It is a debate on which opinion is sharply divided, and this article does not take a side; the protest reflects the strength of feeling among farmers who believe their livelihoods and way of life are under threat, while the authorities point to binding environmental rules they are required to enforce.

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A subdued protest

News of the deaths visibly changed the mood. Organisers said they found it “terrible” that two people had died in the tailback. The stage programme outside the provincial building went ahead, but in a deliberately subdued form, with the music turned off. Inside, provincial politicians held a minute’s silence. The King’s Commissioner for Noord-Brabant, Ina Adema, addressed the crash during the meeting, calling it “a terrible tragedy”.

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This remains a developing story. As of Friday, the confirmed toll stands at two dead and six injured, the A59 was closed while the investigation continued, and the cause of the crash had not been established. Further details, including anything about the victims and how the collision came about, are likely to emerge in the hours and days ahead.

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There may now be an extra listener in the room when you see your GP. A growing number of Dutch family doctors are using artificial intelligence to listen in on their consultations and automatically write up a summary for the patient’s medical file. At least several hundred practices are already doing so, according to nu.nl, though the technology is not flawless, and questions about privacy have not been fully answered.

How it works

The setup is simple to picture: a small microphone on the desk, sometimes a black device no bigger than a saucer, picks up the conversation between doctor and patient. Speech-recognition software converts what is said into text, and an algorithm then turns that into a structured summary, which is added to the electronic patient record.

Crucially, in most set-ups the doctor still has the last word. The summary is meant to be checked and, where needed, corrected by the GP before it goes into the file. Several providers stress that the systems do not keep a recording: the audio is turned straight into text, only the summary is saved, and the rest is deleted, often within a day.

Why doctors like it

For doctors, the appeal is mostly about time and attention. GPs spend a large part of the working day on administration, and much of a consultation can be lost to typing notes while the patient talks. With AI handling the write-up, doctors say they can keep eye contact, listen properly and have a more natural conversation.

The workload argument is significant in a profession under real strain. Some providers claim the time spent on administration outside working hours can fall substantially per consultation, which, supporters argue, makes the job more sustainable and less likely to lead to burnout. The doctors’ organisations are broadly positive about the potential, while insisting that AI should support the GP, not replace the personal contact at the heart of family medicine.

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Where the concerns lie

It is not perfect, however, and the professional bodies are candid about the risks. Speech recognition can misfire, especially if the audio is unclear, and can produce text that is wrong or even, in the worst case, invented, with important nuance sometimes lost. That is precisely why a human check remains essential: the doctor, not the software, stays responsible for what ends up in the record.

Privacy is the other open question. Medical conversations are among the most sensitive personal data there is, protected by both professional confidentiality and European privacy law. When nu.nl asked whether these tools are fully privacy-proof, the Dutch Data Protection Authority (Autoriteit Persoonsgegevens) said it could not yet confirm that they are. Experts also warn that data must not be processed on servers outside the European Union, and medical AI tools of this kind fall under the strict “high-risk” category of the EU’s new AI Act, which places obligations on suppliers and users alike.

There is a notable nuance around consent. According to the medical professional association KNMG, if a tool makes an actual audio recording of the conversation, that counts under privacy law as processing extra-sensitive data, for which the patient’s permission is required, and any recording should be deleted as soon as the written summary exists. Some providers avoid this by not recording at all, converting speech to text on the fly, in which case some practices take the view that no separate consent is needed, because they would be noting the same information in the file anyway. That distinction, between transcribing live and recording, is part of what makes the privacy picture still unsettled.

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What it means for patients

For patients, a few practical points are worth knowing. Your GP should tell you at the start of the appointment if an AI system is being used. If you would rather it was not, you can say so, and the doctor will simply take notes the usual way instead. And whatever the software produces, a person is meant to review it before it becomes part of your record.

The technology is spreading quickly, and it is only one of several ways AI is entering the consulting room, from digital triage tools to systems that sort and summarise the stream of letters GPs receive from hospitals. Used carefully, doctors’ groups say, it could ease a real burden and give patients more of their doctor’s attention. The task now is making sure the safeguards, on accuracy, responsibility and privacy, keep pace with how fast it is being adopted.

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Ordering a pizza to your door or picking up a takeaway on the way home has become a far more regular part of life in the Netherlands, and it is now leaving a visible mark on the country’s inflation figures, according to the Dutch central bank, De Nederlandsche Bank (DNB).

A pandemic habit that stuck

The clearest sign of the change is in how much of their money households spend on it. The share of consumer spending going on takeaways and food delivery has nearly doubled in a decade, from around 1.6 percent in 2015 to just over 3 percent today.

The central bank links the shift to the coronavirus pandemic. During the lockdowns, many more food outlets started offering takeaway and delivery, and large numbers of households got used to ordering through apps and delivery platforms for the first time. When the pandemic passed, the convenience stuck: demand stayed high, and so did the supply of these services. Working from home appears to play a part too, since people who go to the office less often eat lunch at home and are more likely to order in. It all fits a broader trend of people eating more meals that are prepared outside the home, whether in restaurants or ordered to the door.

Two different things: weight and contribution

To see why this matters for inflation, the central bank draws a distinction that is easy to miss. There is a difference between how much weight a category carries in the “consumption basket”, the average share of a household’s budget spent on it, and how much that category contributes to inflation, which is about how price changes within it affect the overall figure.

A category can push inflation up for two reasons: because people spend more on it, or because its prices rise faster than average, or both. Takeaways and food delivery, DNB says, are a textbook example of both happening at once.

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A bigger push on prices

The effect on inflation has grown accordingly. Before the pandemic, this category typically added less than 0.1 percentage points to inflation. By 2023 that had risen to 0.35 percentage points, a marked jump. It has since fallen back to 0.13 percentage points, though that is still higher than before 2020.

The reason the contribution eased is worth noting, because it is not that people are ordering less. It fell mainly because prices for takeaways and delivery have been rising less sharply than they were, not because the category shrank as a share of spending. The earlier surge, between 2020 and 2023, came from steep price increases at these businesses, which faced higher labour costs, more expensive energy and pricier ingredients, and passed part of those costs on to customers. Because households were also spending a growing share of their budgets on ordering in, those price rises had more effect on overall inflation than they once would have.

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A permanent fixture

The upshot, the central bank concludes, is that what began as a practical fix during lockdown has become a fixed part of how people in the Netherlands eat, and therefore a more permanent feature of the inflation figures. As households spend a larger slice of their money on takeaways and delivery, price changes in that corner of the economy carry more weight in the headline number than they used to.

For consumers, it is a reminder that inflation is shaped not only by the obvious drivers like energy, rent and the weekly shop, but also by the slow shifts in how we live and spend. The delivery rider on an electric bike has become a familiar sight on Dutch streets, and, it turns out, a small but growing presence in the country’s price statistics.

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The Netherlands has just experienced more tropical days in a single year than at any point since records began, breaking a mark that had stood since 1947. It caps a summer that has been not only exceptionally hot but also exceptionally dry.

A new record

As of Tuesday 11th August, 31 regional tropical days had been recorded in the Netherlands in 2026. A tropical day is one on which the temperature reaches at least 30 degrees Celsius, and a “regional” tropical day means that threshold was passed somewhere in the country, as measured across the national network of weather stations. That total of 31 surpasses the previous record of 30, set in 1947.

The record fell on Tuesday, when the mercury in Maastricht climbed to 31.5 degrees, making it the 31st day of the year on which it was tropically warm somewhere in the Netherlands. There is a telling detail in the comparison with 1947: in that year, the 30th tropical day did not arrive until September, whereas 2026 reached the same point, and went past it, in the middle of August.

The record is still climbing

Forecasters expect the tally to rise further before the summer is out. More hot weather is on the way this week, with temperatures again forecast to climb above 30 degrees on Wednesday and Thursday, and there is a chance of a regional heatwave, which would be the fifth of the year, an unusually high number for a single Dutch summer.

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A hot summer is also a dry one

The heat has gone hand in hand with a deepening drought, and the two records sit side by side. Since Tuesday morning, this summer has become the second-driest since measurements began in 1901. The national rainfall deficit, the gap between rain that falls and water that evaporates, stands at a historically high 297 millimetres and is still rising. Only the summer of 1976 was drier.

Rijkswaterstaat, the national water authority, has warned that the prolonged drought is taking on “historic” proportions and called the situation “very unusual”. The combination of high temperatures and a lack of rain has put the country under strain for weeks: water boards are urging people to be sparing with water, and in many areas farmers and growers are barred from drawing water to irrigate their land. The National Heat Plan, meanwhile, is in force for the fourth time this year, the first having come in mid-June.

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A warming pattern

Behind the individual records lies a longer trend. According to the national weather service KNMI, tropical days and repeated heatwaves are becoming more frequent as the climate warms. A century ago, the Netherlands averaged only a little more than one tropical day a year; in the present-day climate, the figure is around five, and this summer has left even that far behind.

For now, the country faces a few more warm days before any prospect of relief. The rain that would ease the drought is not expected imminently, and even when it does come, the authorities have said the effects of this dry summer will be felt for months. The reassurance that matters most to households still holds, however: drinking water supplies remain in order.

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The Hague has abandoned its ambition to become a European Capital of Culture, pulling out of the race only weeks after the plan was formally presented. The decision was taken by the city’s new governing coalition, which took office last month.

What has been dropped

The European Capital of Culture is a long-running European Union initiative, under which one or more cities each year are given the title and use it to stage a major programme of cultural events, usually with a significant boost to tourism and profile. The Netherlands is next due to nominate a city for 2033, and The Hague had been working towards putting itself forward, with Heerlen and Groningen also weighing bids.

The city’s project, known as DH33, had been three years in the making. It began in June 2023, when the council adopted a motion as part of drawing up a long-term cultural vision for the city, and grew into a community-built “cultural manifesto” and a formal project plan, which was presented to the council on 7 July. The next step would have been to prepare a formal application.

Why the new coalition withdrew

The bid has now been shelved by the incoming coalition of Hart voor Den Haag, the VVD, the CDA and DENK, which formed the city’s executive last month. Withdrawing from the Capital of Culture race was already written into their coalition agreement.

Rather than spend the money on the European bid, the parties say they will redirect the funding towards “strengthening the cultural foundation of the city”, in other words, supporting the local cultural sector directly rather than pursuing the European title. New councils frequently reprioritise or drop projects begun by their predecessors, and this was a stated commitment from the start.

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A plan that came from the cultural sector

One notable feature of the story is where the bid came from. It did not originate with city politicians, but with The Hague’s own artists, innovators and cultural organisations. More than 80 cultural bodies and makers across the city had officially backed the campaign, which makes the withdrawal most keenly felt within that community.

Perhaps mindful of that, the new executive has tried to soften the blow. In a formal brief to the council, reported by Dagblad 070, it said the collaborative process of building the project plan had produced “valuable insights, knowledge and new connections”. The city says it will now enter talks with the cultural sector to make sure the research and data gathered over the past three years are preserved and built into general local policy, rather than simply discarded.

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The wider picture

The title itself is a prized one. In the Netherlands, Amsterdam held it in 1987, Rotterdam in 2001 and Leeuwarden in 2018, each using the year to draw international visitors and attention. The Hague’s decision means it will not, for now, join that list.

The move also lands at a curious moment for the city’s cultural image. Only days earlier, The New York Times had recommended The Hague as an ideal summer “coolcation”, praising its beach, museums and galleries, and noting that the city wants to reinvent itself as a destination beyond its role as the seat of international justice. The ambition to be seen as a cultural city, it seems, remains, even as the formal race for the European title is left behind.

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The Netherlands is to send dozens of marines to Greenland early next month to take part in a NATO exercise, the defence minister, Dilan Yesilgöz, has announced. The deployment, which will also involve several vessels, comes at a moment of unusual tension around the Arctic island.

What is being sent

Yesilgöz revealed the plan on the television programme Goedenavond Nederland. The defence ministry had already said the Netherlands would take part in the international mission, but had not given numbers. On television, the minister said it would involve “several dozen marines” and “a few vessels”, deployed for a couple of weeks from the start of September, alongside forces from Belgium and other countries.

She declined to give precise figures on how many personnel and which ships would go, saying that Russia closely monitors “who is doing what, where”. Dutch marines have for years trained in Scandinavian waters and above the Arctic Circle to learn to operate in extreme cold.

Why the Netherlands says it is going

According to the defence ministry, the deployment is a response to increased activity by Russia and China in the polar region. “The Arctic region is of strategic importance, also for our security,” the ministry said, describing its defence as a collective NATO responsibility. Yesilgöz echoed that, pointing to the “rising activity of the Russians and the Chinese” in the area.

The Arctic has become a growing focus for Western militaries. As the ice retreats, the region is opening up to new shipping routes and to competition over its mineral and energy resources, and NATO members have paid more attention steadily to it in recent years.

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The Greenland question

The exercise takes place against a charged political backdrop. Greenland is an autonomous territory within the Kingdom of Denmark, a NATO member, but US president Donald Trump has repeatedly said he wants the United States to take control of the mineral-rich island.

Yesilgöz was at pains to separate the Dutch deployment from that dispute. The mission has “nothing to do” with Trump’s ambitions, she said. “It is a NATO exercise, and the United States is also in NATO.” No US personnel are taking part in this particular exercise.

The sensitivity is not hypothetical. In January, after the previous Dutch defence minister, Ruben Brekelmans, said that a single Dutch officer was taking part in an earlier NATO reconnaissance exercise in Greenland, the Trump administration threatened the Netherlands with sanctions. The US president later withdrew that threat.

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A pattern of deployments

The Greenland mission is one of many current Dutch military commitments. Dutch forces are stationed on NATO’s eastern flank in Romania, Dutch ships operate in the Mediterranean, and troops train in Norway and Finland. It fits a broader pattern in which the Netherlands, like other European members, has expanded its military role as the alliance responds to a more unstable security environment, driven by the war in Ukraine and pressure from Washington on European allies to do more for their own defence.

For now, the details of the Greenland deployment remain deliberately vague. What is clear is that, for a few weeks in September, Dutch marines will be training in one of the most strategically contested corners of the map.

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Two weeks after Rotterdam took the unusual step of banning people from entering part of the De Esch neighbourhood at night without a good reason, residents say the effect has been striking: the nights have gone quiet. Now the question is what happens when the ban runs out in October.

A dramatic change

The measure took effect on 23 July. Between 11pm and 5am, it is an offence to be on the streets in the designated area without a legitimate reason to be there, a response to years of persistent night-time disruption, most of it caused by people who do not live in the neighbourhood.

For residents, the difference has been immediate. “The windows can just stay open all the time,” one told the broadcaster NOS. “It was very quiet from night one.” Another resident told the regional broadcaster Rijnmond that before the ban she had been kept awake almost every night by shouting and blaring car horns, even with earplugs, and that she had finally slept well for the first time in a long while.

The neighbourhood, home to more than 4,000 people, had endured street races, drug use and prostitution at night for years. Police research found that most of those responsible came from outside De Esch.

How enforcement is going

In the first fortnight, police stopped around 100 people in the area. No fines have been handed out yet, though the penalty for being present without a good reason is expected to be more than 100 euros. Residents, their visitors, people going to a bar or event and those who work in the area are exempt from the ban.

Police and the council say the disruption does not appear to have simply moved to other neighbourhoods. Both add an important caveat, however: it is the summer holiday season, when the area would tend to be quieter anyway, so the fuller picture will only become clear later.

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The fight over what happens next

The ban is not permanent. It runs for three months, until October, and can be extended by a further three months after consultation. With that deadline approaching, a debate has opened over what should follow, and residents are worried the trouble will come straight back once the restriction lifts.

The residents’ committee wants the neighbourhood closed off at night even after the ban ends, proposing that marshals be stationed at the entrances at weekends to let in only those with a reason to be there.

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The neighbourhood council, which advises the city, is against going that far. “It restricts the movement of other Rotterdammers too much,” its chairman, Christiaan de Jong, told NOS. He said he hoped instead that behaviour would change and that any disruption would be less severe than before. The council says it is too early to talk about a permanent solution, and stresses that no other part of Rotterdam needs a measure like this.

That tension, between residents who have finally got their quiet nights back and want to hold on to them, and those who worry about sealing off a public neighbourhood and curbing people’s freedom to move around their own city, is likely to define the discussion between now and October. For the moment, though, the streets of De Esch are calm, and for the people who live there, that alone counts as a significant change.

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Anyone hunting for a student room in the Netherlands should be on their guard. Hundreds of fake advertisements for student rooms and rental homes are circulating on TikTok, aimed at cheating people out of their money, according to an investigation by NOS Stories.

How the scam works

The fraudsters copy photographs of real rooms from legitimate rental platforms, in particular Pararius, one of the largest in the country, and repost them as their own listings. The trap is sprung before anyone ever sees the property. Victims are asked to pay upfront, a deposit, a viewing fee, or a so-called reservation guarantee, and once the money is transferred, it disappears. In many cases the room does not exist at all.

The national student union, the LSVb, said it regularly hears from young people who have been caught out. “Sometimes a deposit is also demanded in advance and the room turns out not to exist at all,” said its vice-chair, Juliana Könning. “Students then lose their deposit of, say, three months’ rent.” For someone on a tight budget, losing several months’ rent in one go is a serious blow.

A sharp rise in reports

The problem appears to be growing quickly. The Fraudehelpdesk, the national fraud reporting centre, received 175 reports in the first half of 2026 from people scammed through an advertisement, according to NOS Stories, up sharply from 21 in the previous six months.

The timing makes it worse. The scams flourish now, in the run-up to the new academic year, when large numbers of students are competing for a limited supply of rooms. The underlying housing shortage is part of what makes the fraud so effective: when rooms are scarce and demand is desperate, people are more likely to act fast and pay quickly for fear of missing out.

International students are among those most exposed. They often cannot fall back on a parental home nearby, may be searching from abroad before they arrive, and are frequently unfamiliar with how the Dutch rental market works or what their rights are, all of which makes them easier targets.

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Platforms under pressure

The rental sites whose listings are being stolen say they are frustrated. Some people who lose money even turn up at Pararius believing they rented through the site, because they transferred a payment, when in fact it went to a scammer. “We are completely fed up and want action from TikTok now,” Pararius spokesperson Jasper de Groot said. The company says it has sent TikTok dossiers containing victims’ police reports and a registered letter, without success, and now intends to take legal action against the platform. “It has to stop,” De Groot said.

TikTok said content used to defraud people is not allowed and that it removes such posts, though it did not explain why it had not acted on the reports Pararius filed. After NOS Stories shared a number of fake adverts with the platform, the accounts behind them were taken down, but dozens of other scam accounts were still online. Other housing sites are also affected: Funda said it warns consumers but can do little because the fraud happens elsewhere, while the room-rental site Kamernet said it advises users to report suspicious posts and may take legal steps if they are not removed.

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How to protect yourself

The single most important rule is simple: never pay anything for a room you have not seen and a landlord you cannot verify. No legitimate landlord or agency should require a deposit, a viewing fee or a “reservation” payment before you have viewed the property and signed a proper contract.

A few further checks help. Be suspicious of a deal that seems too good, a spacious, cheap room in a city where such rooms barely exist is a classic warning sign. Treat rooms advertised on social media platforms like TikTok with extra caution, and try to verify a listing against an established rental site rather than the other way round. You can run one of the listing photos through a reverse image search to see whether it has been lifted from somewhere else. Insist on a viewing, in person or, if you are still abroad, by live video, rather than pre-recorded clips or photos. Be wary of any landlord who refuses to meet, pushes you to pay quickly, or wants the money by an untraceable method. And be careful about handing over copies of your passport or other documents before anything is confirmed.

Anyone who thinks they have been targeted, or has already lost money, can report it to the police and to the Fraudehelpdesk. Universities and student housing offices can also help international students find safe, verified accommodation and check whether an offer is genuine.

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The head of the Netherlands’ military intelligence service left a fitness app account open to the public for years, unintentionally revealing his home address and daily movements, according to an investigation by the newspaper de Volkskrant. It is an awkward lapse for the person in charge of protecting the country’s secrets.

What happened

Vice-admiral Peter Reesink, who has led the Military Intelligence and Security Service (MIVD) since February 2024, kept a public account on the fitness app Strava, on which users log runs and bike rides. Between 2018 and 2025, dozens of his activities were visible to anyone who cared to look.

From that data, the paper’s reporters were able to piece together a detailed picture of his life. On several occasions he had cycled from the MIVD’s headquarters to his home, making it easy to work out his address. The records also showed where he kept his camper van, and when and where he went on holiday.

Keeping such a public account is against the defence ministry’s own guidelines. After de Volkskrant asked about it, the account was set to private, so the information is no longer visible, and Reesink has asked Strava to delete it entirely.

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‘He knows better now’

Reesink said he had not realised the account was still active. He explained that he had linked a bike computer to a Strava account years ago, removed the app at some point, but forgot to delete the profile itself.

A defence ministry spokesperson said Reesink regretted what had happened. “With the knowledge of now, he knows better,” the spokesperson said. The ministry repeated its standard advice to defence staff: keep your profile private, avoid certain apps at defence locations, and do not make yourself identifiable as a member of the military on such platforms.

The timing is uncomfortable. Reesink has himself publicly cautioned that large organisations can be naive about security, and had noted that even at his own briefings, people sometimes questioned whether they really needed to leave their phones outside.

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A well-known risk

The wider issue is not new. It has been understood for years that fitness apps can expose sensitive information, because the routes people log tend to start and end at their homes, workplaces or bases. Investigations have repeatedly shown how the location data shared through such apps can be used to trace individuals, including members of the military, and even to locate sensitive sites. Last year, one Dutch broadcaster managed to trace more than a thousand Dutch military personnel through Strava.

For ordinary users, the episode is a useful prompt. Anyone who records runs or rides on an app may be sharing more than they realise. It is worth checking that your profile is private, using the app’s features to hide the area around your home, and thinking about whether your routes reveal where you live, work or regularly spend time. If the head of a national intelligence service can be caught out by a forgotten account, most people can too.

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Summer is not done with the Netherlands yet. After a brief cooler spell, the heat is set to return this week, bringing with it a good chance of what would be the fifth regional heatwave of the year, and, as a welcome side effect, clear skies for Wednesday evening’s solar eclipse.

The week ahead

Monday and Tuesday offer a short pause, with temperatures staying below 30°C. On Monday, most cloud drifts over the north of the country, where a little rain may fall, though after such a long dry spell this will bring almost no relief, and some of it may even evaporate before it reaches the ground.

From Wednesday, it warms up again. Thursday and Friday in particular look hot, with temperatures above 30°C across much of the country and possibly reaching 34 to 36°C in the south. That raises the prospect of a fifth regional heatwave in 2026, an unusually high number for a single Dutch summer. A cooler change may arrive over the coming weekend, possibly with some showers, though these could be very localised and miss many places entirely.

Good news for the eclipse

The dry, settled weather has one clear upside. There will be little cloud through the week, and what does pass over is expected to be thin, wispy high cloud, the kind you can often see through. That is a promising sign for the partial solar eclipse on Wednesday evening, which forecasters say should therefore be well visible across the country.

The eclipse is a rare event for the Netherlands. On Wednesday evening the moon will pass in front of the sun and cover almost 90 percent of it, the largest eclipse visible from the country since 1999, with the next comparable ones not expected until 2081 and 2090. It will not go fully dark, but the light will noticeably dim. Observatories and universities around the country are opening for public viewing evenings.

One important reminder comes with it. You must never look directly at the sun, even when most of it is hidden, because the remaining light is still strong enough to cause serious and permanent eye damage. Ordinary sunglasses are nowhere near enough. The only safe way to watch is through certified eclipse glasses or a telescope or binoculars fitted with a proper solar filter.

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The drought drags on

For all that the sunshine suits eclipse-watchers, it is far from good news everywhere. The return of the heat comes with a continued lack of rain, and the drought that has gripped the country for weeks is only deepening. In the west of the Netherlands, the rainfall deficit, the balance between rain that falls and water that evaporates from the soil and plants, has risen to around 400 millimetres.

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The Netherlands has been in an official water shortage since mid-July, with the Rhine recently hitting its lowest level ever recorded, shipping restricted and bans in some regions on using water to irrigate crops. Drinking water is not at risk. But with little meaningful rain in prospect for days to come, and the possibility that the weekend’s showers will be scattered and patchy, there is no real end to the dry spell in sight. For now, the clear skies that will make Wednesday’s eclipse a treat are the same skies keeping the rain away.

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The data breach at the logistics company CEVA Logistics, which came to light earlier this week when the online store Bol and the department store de Bijenkorf warned their customers, has widened considerably. Several more well-known names have now said they are affected, including the football club Ajax, the bank ING and the eyewear chain Ace & Tate.

One weak link, many brands

The common thread is CEVA Logistics, an international logistics firm that handles warehousing and deliveries for all of these companies, and which therefore had access to the customer data needed to fulfil orders. The breach was not at the affected companies’ own systems, but at their shared delivery partner, which is why a single security incident has ended up touching so many different organisations at once.

CEVA has said it cannot rule out that personal data was leaked. The companies involved stress that, as far as they know, no payment details, bank information, usernames or passwords were taken. What may have been exposed is contact and order information: names, addresses, email addresses and phone numbers. For business customers of some firms, company names and VAT numbers may also be involved, and older Dutch VAT numbers can in some cases contain a citizen service number (BSN). According to RTL Nieuws, data belonging to Bol and de Bijenkorf customers is already being offered on the dark web.

Who is affected, and how

The details vary from company to company. At ING, the breach concerns customers who ordered physical products through the bank’s loyalty points shop, rather than banking data. Ace & Tate said an unauthorised party gained access, on 1 August, to part of the systems used for packing and shipping its orders, and warned that eyeglass prescriptions, financial data, usernames and passwords were not affected. Ajax is still investigating whether personal data was actually taken, and says address, order and contact details of supporters could be involved.

The reach extends beyond the Netherlands. The German online retailer Zalando has confirmed it also experienced the CEVA incident, though it says its own customers’ data was not affected, and CEVA has reported that several of its European warehouse locations are experiencing disruption.

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Delays and warnings

As with the earlier cases, there are practical knock-on effects. Ace & Tate and Ajax have both warned that orders and returns may take longer because of the logistics problems, while online ordering continues. The affected companies have reported the breach to the Dutch Data Protection Authority (Autoriteit Persoonsgegevens), as Bol and de Bijenkorf did earlier in the week, and Ajax has advised its supporters to be extra alert to phishing messages in the coming weeks. CEVA Logistics itself had not issued a public response at the time of writing, saying it would react at a later stage.

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Why the bigger picture matters

Security experts say the widening list of victims points to a broader risk. When many separate breaches happen in a short space of time, criminals can combine the data from different leaks, matching a name from one with an email address or order history from another, to build a fuller picture of a person and make their scams far more convincing.

That is what makes the main piece of advice more important than usual. Because criminals may hold genuine details of people’s names, addresses and recent orders, the biggest danger now is targeted phishing: fake messages, by email, text or phone, that look believable precisely because they refer to a real purchase or account. The sensible response is to treat any unexpected message about an order, delivery, refund or payment with caution, even if it quotes accurate details, and not to click on links or call phone numbers contained in such messages. To check on an order, go to the company’s own website or app directly rather than following a link. Anyone who thinks they have been targeted can report it to the Fraud Helpdesk.

For most people there is no need to panic, particularly as passwords and payment data appear not to have been taken. But this is a good moment to be a little more sceptical than usual about messages landing in your inbox.

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If you want to avoid Europe’s summer heat, skip Paris and Barcelona and head to The Hague. That, in short, is the message of a glowing travel piece in The New York Times, which has recommended the Dutch city as the ideal spot for what it calls a “coolcation”.

A cooler alternative

The premise is simple. While temperatures climb towards 40 degrees Celsius in cities like Paris and Madrid during the summer, the American newspaper argues, things are far more bearable on the North Sea coast. As reported by de Volkskrant, the Times headlined its recommendation with the idea that, while southern Europe suffers under extreme heat, The Hague makes an ideal destination for a cooling holiday.

The write-up paints an appealing picture of the city. It describes winding cobbled streets and picturesque canals, and a place where visitors can admire Vermeer’s Girl with a Pearl Earring, then go surfing, sip sangria and watch sailing boats bob on the horizon. On the beach, the paper notes, you hear Dutch, English, French, German and Spanish, and “the scent of coconut sunscreen hangs in the air above the salty beach”.

Echoes of Rotterdam in 2014

Whether the attention will actually translate into extra hotel bookings remains to be seen. But there is a striking precedent. In early 2014, Rotterdam received an enormous boost after it landed high on lists of original destinations compiled by The New York Times and the Rough Guide, praised for its “raw beauty” and its then brand-new Markthal and Centraal Station. The Times called it “first-class architecture in the Netherlands’ second city”.

That endorsement set off a chain reaction. Other travel journalists picked up the theme, and Rotterdam went on to be recommended by outlets including the French Madame Figaro, which dubbed it “the underground capital par excellence”, and the design magazine Couch, which called it “a haven for design”. Dutch media noticed too, and by the end of that year the city’s marketing body had amassed a thick file of clippings. The hope, unstated but obvious, is that The Hague might now enjoy a similar moment.

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A city on the rise

The timing is not bad. The Hague has already seen the number of hotel overnight stays rise by 60 percent over the past decade, and the city says it wants to position itself as a destination for “style seekers”, as the Times put it. That is a notable ambition for a city that, especially outside Europe, is still known first and foremost as the home of the International Criminal Court and other institutions of international justice, rather than as a beach-and-art break.

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Not immune to the climate

For all the sunny framing, the article does not entirely look away from the reason “coolcations” are a thing in the first place. The New York Times acknowledges that The Hague, too, is grappling with the consequences of climate change. In one telling detail, a guide showing foreign tourists around the city points to a withered flowerbed near the statue of the philosopher Spinoza. “I don’t remember the grass being yellow from my childhood,” the guide says.

It is a small, wistful note in an otherwise upbeat picture, and a fitting one for a summer in which the Netherlands has swung between heatwaves and a deepening drought. The appeal of a cooler city break is real. But the yellowed grass is a quiet reminder that the north of Europe is warming too.

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The fiercest heat of the summer is behind the Netherlands, at least for now, but the country is getting little relief where it matters most: rain. The coming days will stay warm and dry, and with almost no rain in the forecast, the drought that has gripped the country for weeks is only deepening.

The weekend and the week ahead

After a calm Friday with temperatures around 21 to 25°C, the weekend turns summery again. Saturday brings a largely cloudless sky and highs of 25 to 28°C, and on Sunday it warms further, with inland temperatures reaching around or just above 30°C. It stays dry and fairly sunny.

After that, the weather begins to yo-yo, as forecasters put it. Early next week a cooler airflow from the west and north pushes maximum temperatures back down to around 25°C by Tuesday, before the charts turn warmer again later in the week. Throughout, there is barely a drop of rain in prospect. This spell is more ordinary summer warmth than the extreme heat of earlier in the season, and no new National Heat Plan has been announced for it, but the heat, forecasters say, remains lurking in the background.

A record-breaking drought

The bigger story is the water, or the lack of it. The Netherlands has been in what the authorities call an actual water shortage since 16 July, the second of four levels on the national scale. Little rain has fallen, not only here but in the upstream catchments of the Rhine and the Meuse, the rivers that bring much of the country’s fresh water from abroad.

The result has been historic. Late last month the Rhine fell to its lowest level ever recorded at Lobith, where it enters the country. The national rainfall deficit is approaching the levels of 1976, one of the driest years on record, and forecasters expect it to keep rising, with the shortfall projected to reach around 290 millimetres within a couple of weeks. The dry conditions are worst in the southwest of the country and least severe in the northeast.

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Where the strain is showing

The consequences are increasingly visible. Because the rivers are so low, ships can no longer be fully loaded, some locks are being operated less often to save fresh water, and ports including Deventer have had to close. In several regions there are bans on taking water from the ground or from streams to irrigate crops. As the rivers weaken, salt water is pushing further inland, threatening water quality, and water boards are carrying out extra inspections of dikes, which so far have shown only minor surface cracks rather than dangerous damage.

The effects reach into daily life in unexpected ways. In Utrecht province, the Leersumse Veld lake has effectively dried up. Owners of houseboats have reported problems as the water beneath them drops, including cracking and odour nuisance. Market gardeners hit by irrigation bans have floated the idea of using treated sewage water on their crops.

One reassurance runs through all of this: an official water shortage is not a drinking water shortage. The authorities stress that there is enough drinking water, and that the measures being taken are aimed at shipping, agriculture and protecting the wider water system.

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No compensation for businesses

For the businesses bearing the brunt, there was unwelcome news this week. The cabinet said it will not compensate companies for the damage caused by the low water, with the minister for infrastructure and water management, Vincent Karremans, describing it as a business risk. The government estimates the economic damage to businesses at tens to hundreds of millions of euros, hitting inland shipping, greenhouse horticulture and boat owners hardest, but says an emergency scheme like the one after the 2021 Limburg floods is not warranted, because this is not a natural disaster, and that the budget for it is lacking. “We cannot do anything about the fact that it is not raining either,” Karremans said, adding that there is an actual water shortage “but it is not yet a crisis”.

Looking further ahead, the minister said the government would take decisions in the autumn as part of a longer-term freshwater programme, to make sure the country has enough “rain barrels”, as he put it, for the next time drought strikes. Those, he suggested, will be far-reaching choices, including giving up scarce land for water storage. For now, though, the country can only wait for rain that, for the coming days at least, is not going to come.

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Two of the best-known names in Dutch retail, the online store Bol and the department store de Bijenkorf, have warned their customers about a possible data breach. The leak did not happen at the shops themselves, but at a company that handles their deliveries, and it shows how a single weak link in the supply chain can affect several brands at once.

What happened

The breach was the result of a cyberattack on CEVA Logistics, an international logistics firm that carries out warehouse and shipping operations for both Bol and de Bijenkorf. According to Bol, unauthorised parties may have gained access to CEVA’s systems. The retailers stress that their own systems were not affected; the problem lies with a partner that processes their orders.

Bol says the incident relates to the handling of orders from one of its distribution centres, reported by several media to be in Waalwijk. Once the attack was discovered, CEVA moved to shut off the intruders’ access, and Bol says it halted its data exchange with CEVA and brought in external cybersecurity specialists, adding that the two will only resume working together once the systems are confirmed to be safe.

What data may have leaked

For customers who receive a warning email, the data that may have been exposed includes names, addresses, postcodes, email addresses, telephone numbers and details of their orders, such as order numbers and track-and-trace information.

Both companies say there is an important limit to the damage: at this stage there are no indications that payment details, passwords or login credentials were caught up in the incident. It is also not yet clear how many customers are affected. An external investigation into the cause, scale and consequences is under way, and the stolen data may be circulating among criminals.

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A delay that raised questions

The timeline has drawn some scrutiny. Bol says CEVA told it on 1 August that there may have been a breach. The companies notified the Dutch Data Protection Authority (Autoriteit Persoonsgegevens) on 3 August, and affected customers were emailed on 5 August.

Asked by NOS why customers were not told sooner, a Bol spokesperson said the company had first needed to investigate thoroughly what had happened and which customers were affected. “That is something we immediately worked very hard on,” the spokesperson said. “We want to inform customers as well as possible in one go, and not two or three times.” Under European rules, companies must report a data breach to the regulator within 72 hours, but there is no fixed deadline for warning customers, only that it must happen without delay when there is a high risk to the people involved.

Delays to orders

There are practical knock-on effects too. Because of the security measures taken, the processing of orders, returns and refunds is running late, and some orders have been cancelled or may be delayed. Stock held at the affected location has been temporarily taken offline. The shops and websites otherwise remain open.

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What customers should do

The most important thing to know is where the real risk lies. Because criminals may hold genuine details of people’s names and recent orders, the biggest danger now is targeted phishing: fake messages, by email, text or phone, that look convincing precisely because they refer to a real purchase. Both retailers have urged customers to be extra alert to this.

A few sensible steps follow from that. Be wary of any unexpected message about an order, a delivery problem, a refund or a payment, even if it quotes accurate details, and do not click on links or call phone numbers contained in such messages. If you want to check on an order, go to the retailer’s website or app directly rather than following a link. Although the companies say passwords were not leaked, it does no harm to use a strong, unique password for your accounts. And be aware that criminals may exploit the news itself by sending fake “data breach warnings”, so check carefully who a message is really from; the retailers are contacting affected customers directly.

If you receive a message you are unsure about, or think you may have been targeted, you can report it to the Fraud Helpdesk. Customers who have not received an email from Bol or de Bijenkorf have, for now, no indication that their data was accessed.

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Around half of the households in the Netherlands that heat their homes through a district heating network could end up paying more, in some cases much more, under new rules on how heat is priced. The warning comes from the Authority for Consumers and Markets (ACM), the Dutch consumer and competition regulator.

What district heating is, and who it affects

District heating, known in Dutch as a warmtenet or stadsverwarming, supplies homes with heat from a shared source, such as waste heat from industry or waste incineration, or heat drawn from the ground, rather than each home burning its own gas. It is a growing part of the country’s plan to move away from natural gas, and it currently heats around 700,000 households.

For many of those households, this is not a market they can shop around in. Most cannot switch to another heat supplier, because a district heating network is a fixed piece of local infrastructure, so they are directly exposed to whatever the rules decide their heat should cost.

What is changing

At the moment, the price of district heating is capped. The maximum tariff is based on what it would cost to heat the same home with a gas connection and a boiler, a long-standing principle known as “not more than otherwise”. In effect, district heating customers are protected from paying more than gas users would.

That cap is being phased out under the new Collective Heat Act (Wet collectieve warmte, or WCW), which takes effect from 1 January 2027. In its place, the ACM will gradually set tariffs based on the actual costs of each individual heating network. The idea has two goals: that customers pay only for the costs of their own network, and that companies investing in heat infrastructure have more certainty of a reasonable return.

Because those costs vary a great deal from one network to another, depending on the heat source, the size of the network and how densely packed the homes are, moving to cost-based pricing means prices will diverge. Some networks are cheaper to run than others, and bills will start to reflect that.

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The winners and losers

The ACM’s economists worked out what this would have meant if it had applied in 2024, the most recent year for which detailed cost data is available. Roughly half of customers would have paid less under the new system, and the other half more.

At the extremes, the differences are large. The 10 percent of households who benefit most would see their bills fall by an average of 29 percent. But the 10 percent who lose most would pay about 71 percent more, which works out at over 740 euros a year. In the most extreme cases, and if the government takes no action, annual costs could rise by as much as 1,500 euros.

It is important to be clear about what these numbers are. The regulator stresses that this is a snapshot of what would have happened in 2024, not a prediction of future bills, and that the precise method for setting cost-based tariffs has not yet been worked out. The figures are an indication of the impact of the new approach, not a forecast for any individual household.

Can anything soften the blow?

The ACM says the law still leaves room for the government to bring in extra measures to keep heat affordable, and that it is studying the options and preparing for the change. The law itself specifies that the switch to cost-based tariffs can only happen once affordability is sufficiently safeguarded.

Possible measures floated by analysts include capping the biggest increases, for example at 125 percent of the average tariff, spreading costs between networks, or giving financial support to particular groups. There is a specific worry about the fixed part of the bill, the standing charge you pay regardless of how much heat you use. Under cost-based pricing this could range from a few hundred euros to nearly 2,000 euros a year on some networks, which would hit people who use little heat, including many social housing tenants, particularly hard, and give them less reason to save energy.

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What households can do now

For the moment, there is little that individual customers can do to prevent a possible increase, since switching supplier is usually not an option. The practical advice from consumer commentators is to find out now which heat company and which network your home is connected to, and to keep your annual heating statements, so that you can later see clearly whether your fixed charges, usage costs and total bill really do change. Anyone renting or buying a home with district heating is also advised to look beyond the rent or mortgage and check what the heating arrangement will cost.

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The long drought in the Netherlands has become a story about far more than parched gardens and low rivers. As water levels fall to historic lows, it is exposing just how much the Dutch economy depends on being able to move goods by water, and what happens when it cannot.

Closed canals, costly delays

The immediate problem is for inland shipping. Because of the low water, ships can no longer be fully loaded, and some waterways have been closed altogether. The lock at Eefde was shut earlier, cutting off the busy Twente Canal, and overnight the Parksluizen in Rotterdam were due to close, blocking the Delftse Schie, a route normally used to move concrete, sand and metal.

These closures come at a steep price. The closure of the Twente Canal is costing businesses hundreds of thousands of euros a day, and Royal Inland Shipping Netherlands estimates the shutdown of the Delftse Schie could run to hundreds of thousands of euros a week.

A small sector with a long reach

On paper, inland shipping is not a huge part of the economy. It supports around 22,000 jobs and added 1.8 billion euros in value last year, according to Statistics Netherlands, less than half a percent of the total. But that figure badly understates its importance, because it does not capture the many businesses that depend on goods arriving and leaving by water.

Take a livestock-feed producer in Lochem, or a concrete company that ships in the sand and gravel it needs, both of which rely on the Twente Canal. With the water low, it is suddenly clear they can no longer move anywhere near as much as before. “The importance of inland shipping there is very great. Some companies are set up to move thousands of kilos by water,” said Ricky Voorn, an inland shipping expert at the trade organisation Evofenedex. Such firms, he said, can now move only a fraction of what they could before the water dropped.

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What the ships actually carry

Last year, Dutch inland vessels carried 333 million tonnes of goods. A large share is ores and minerals, the raw materials for metals such as iron and copper, along with fuels and processed oil products like petrol, diesel and kerosene. The chemical industry also leans heavily on water transport, for the materials that go into rubber and plastics.

The scale is what makes it hard to replace. “If they cannot sail one ship, you need dozens of lorries to make up for it,” Voorn said. And much of it is international: more than half of the goods coming into the Netherlands by water last year arrived from Belgium and most of the rest from Germany, while most of what the country sends out by water goes to Germany. Around a third of inland shipping is purely domestic. “We need it, because not everything can go by road,” Voorn said.

Some cargo simply cannot move

For certain businesses, there is no fallback at all. Royal Van der Wees, a firm in Dordrecht, transports things like metres-long steel pipes, helicopter platforms and entire transformers weighing hundreds of thousands of kilos. These cannot simply be split into smaller loads or put on a truck. “We cannot transport this by road, because an object like that weighs more than 300 tonnes, and viaducts cannot take it,” said the company’s Wouter Lambregts.

The knock-on effects reach beyond the company itself. The transformers it moves by water are needed to reinforce the Dutch electricity grid, which is already under strain. For now, an empty pontoon sits in Dordrecht, unable to travel to Germany to collect one. Whether the heavy vessels can cross the Rhine depends on the water level at Kaub in Germany, and the firm is anxiously watching the forecast there. “It does not look hopeful for the time being,” Lambregts said. “So for us, it is simply a case of waiting.”

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A sign of things to come

Experts say the episode is a warning. Because extreme conditions like these are likely to become more frequent, Voorn argued, companies will need to plan for them, for example by spreading their transport across different routes and times, where that is possible at all.

How long the drought will last is unclear. The level of the Rhine is historically low, and Rijkswaterstaat expects that over the next fifteen days the river’s flow will stay below what is needed to manage the distribution of water across the Netherlands properly. For a country criss-crossed by 7,000 kilometres of navigable water, that is more than an inconvenience; it is a reminder of how much rides on the rivers staying deep enough to sail.

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The Netherlands has developed a growing appetite for fast food, at least judging by how many places now sell it. According to Statistics Netherlands (CBS), the number of fast-food outlets in the country has almost doubled over the past twenty years, and for the first time they outnumber traditional restaurants.

The figures

At the start of 2026, the Netherlands had more than 19,000 fast-food outlets, up from around 10,000 in 2007. Regular restaurants grew over the same period too, but more slowly, from about 11,000 to just over 19,000. In total the country now has close to 39,000 eating places, and slightly more than half of them are fast-food outlets. Until 2019 it was the other way round, with restaurants in the majority.

What counts as ‘fast food’

One thing is worth clearing up, because the term can be misleading. In the CBS figures, “fast food” does not just mean the well-known international burger chains. It also covers a range of typically Dutch establishments: the cafetaria or snackbar, the broodjeszaak or sandwich shop, food stalls, and ijssalons, or ice cream parlours. So the trend is less about a wave of new burger restaurants and more about a broad category of quick, casual places to grab a bite.

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Where they are

Unsurprisingly, the outlets cluster where the people are. The four big cities, Amsterdam, Rotterdam, The Hague and Utrecht, together account for almost 20 percent of all the fast-food outlets in the country. Amsterdam alone has around 1,600, followed by Rotterdam with just under 1,000, The Hague with around 790 and Utrecht with roughly 445.

Measured against population, though, it is the tourist areas that stand out. On average the Netherlands has a little more than one fast-food outlet per thousand residents, but on the island of Vlieland there are more than eight per thousand, with the other Wadden islands of Schiermonnikoog, Ameland and Terschelling close behind. The coast and other holiday spots are similarly well supplied. At the other end of the scale, the municipality of Staphorst has proportionally the fewest.

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Why the increase

The main explanation, according to CBS, has less to do with diet than with money and habits. As the country has grown more prosperous, people have simply been eating out more often. “This is probably due to increased prosperity,” said CBS chief economist Peter Hein van Mulligen. “We have more money to spend, so we go out to eat more often, or grab a sandwich or an ice cream.”

The rise in fast-food outlets has not gone entirely unnoticed by policymakers. In recent years there have been political calls to limit the number of fast-food shops in city centres, partly out of concern for public health and the character of shopping streets, though the CBS figures themselves are a simple count of businesses rather than a statement about what people should eat.

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Dutch police have expressed concern about a sharp rise in the number of gas and alarm pistols, air weapons and pepper sprays they are seizing, weapons that are often bought cheaply just across the border and are difficult to tell apart from real firearms.

The figures

In 2022, police confiscated 4,080 weapons in this category. Last year the figure rose to 5,165, an increase of almost 27 percent, according to numbers the police gave to the broadcaster NOS. The trend has continued into 2026.

Pepper spray, which is banned for civilians in the Netherlands, has become notably more common in the figures. Seizures rose from 992 in 2022 to 1,446 last year, and in the first half of 2026 alone police took 851 canisters. Gas and alarm pistols also went up, from 1,685 in 2022 to 1,959 last year.

What the numbers do and do not show

It is worth being careful about what such figures mean. The police themselves stress that they do not know whether more people are actually walking around with these weapons, or whether the rise simply reflects the fact that finding and confiscating them has been given more priority in recent years. In other words, a jump in seizures can be a sign of harder policing as much as of a bigger problem. The police also note that this is an issue that has been running for some time and already has their attention.

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Why gas and alarm pistols worry the police

Even so, one part of the trend genuinely concerns them. Gas and alarm pistols are the main worry, said police spokesman Martin van der Meij, because they are barely distinguishable from real firearms. An alarm pistol makes a loud bang but fires no projectile, while a gas weapon can release something like tear gas.

The deeper problem is what can be done with them. “They are cheap, readily available, and relatively simple to convert into a live-firing weapon, in other words, into a real firearm,” Van der Meij said. That is not a theoretical risk: a converted pistol of this kind was used in the 2021 murder of the well-known crime reporter Peter R. de Vries. The police have said these weapons are a growing feature of serious violence in the criminal world.

Bought over the border, a criminal offence to bring home

A large share of the weapons enter the country from just across the border. In the Netherlands, it is illegal to buy a weapon that is hard to distinguish from a real firearm, but in Germany these items can be bought without a licence by anyone over 18.

Herman Oldenkotte, who runs a gun shop in Gronau, just over the German border from Enschede, told NOS that he estimated 80 to 90 percent of his customers were Dutch. He does not record where his customers come from, which he is not required to do, and says he checks that buyers are over 18. He said he does not sell by post, even though people ask: customers have to come to the shop.

There is an important catch that not everyone knows about. “People do not always realise that they are committing a criminal offence when they buy such a weapon in Belgium or Germany and then bring it to the Netherlands,” Van der Meij said. Police also report that a growing number of these weapons are arriving by post.

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Calls for European rules

The Netherlands has pushed for years for a licence requirement within the European Union or an outright ban on these weapons, so far without such rules being introduced.

Pepper spray remains banned for civilians under Dutch weapons law. In June, the justice ministry said it planned to allow permits for people at particular risk, such as victims of stalking, while ruling out legalising it for everyone.

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A large wildfire has been burning for two days in the Boschhuizerbergen nature reserve near Oostrum, in the North Limburg municipality of Venray, and as of Tuesday morning it is still not under control. Hundreds of firefighters are working to contain it, helped by military helicopters, in what officials have called a tougher fight than expected.

How it started and spread

The fire broke out around the late morning of Monday 3 August. In the dry, hot conditions, it spread quickly as the wind picked up. The area involved is largely pine forest, and the resin in the trees acts almost like a fuel, letting the fire climb high into the canopy and jump from treetop to treetop, which makes it especially hard to put out.

It grew fast. Early estimates on Monday afternoon put the area on fire at around 21 hectares. By Tuesday morning that had risen to about 100 hectares, roughly one square kilometre, with the safety region reporting that the fire was spreading from the south of the area towards the east. “It is tougher than expected,” a spokesperson for the Limburg-North safety region said, adding that a wildfire “can behave unpredictably” and often takes longer to fight than hoped.

The response

The scale of the operation has been large. At its height the incident was escalated to what is known in the Netherlands as GRIP 2, a level that brings in extra regional coordination beyond the immediate scene; it has since been scaled back to GRIP 1. Around 250 to 300 firefighters have been deployed, with crews coming from across the country to support the Limburg fire service, along with dozens of vehicles. Local farmers also pitched in, bringing water tanks to help supply the huge quantities of water needed for a long operation.

The fire has been fought from the air as well as the ground. Two army helicopters helped on Monday but had to stop at nightfall, because dropping water in the dark is unsafe when crews cannot see the firefighters working below. The helicopters returned on Tuesday morning, with the first water dropped at around 8.30am.

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The impact on the area

The fire has disrupted the surrounding area, though the human cost has so far been avoided. A campsite in the reserve, De Oude Barrier in Venray, was evacuated on Monday because of poor air quality, and its guests were taken to a nearby hotel. “It was a rather different way to wake up than we had expected,” one guest told NOS. The campsite is staying closed for the time being because of the smoke.

Residents nearby have received NL-Alerts, the national emergency phone warnings, about the smoke, and on Tuesday a fresh alert was sent covering more municipalities than before, after the wind shifted and widened the affected area. The smoke plume has been drifting east, bringing possible nuisance to villages including Maashees, Geijsteren and Wanssum; people affected are advised to close windows and doors and switch off mechanical ventilation. The safety region says soot particles are coming down on cars and garden furniture in the area, but that these are not dangerous to health and can simply be rinsed off with water.

Train services between Venray and Boxmeer have been suspended because of the fire and the firefighting operation. The rail manager ProRail initially expected the disruption to last until around 6pm on Tuesday, though that timing may change as the situation develops.

The current status

As of Tuesday morning, the fire had not spread further in the preceding hours and the situation was described as stable, but the blaze was still not under control. Parts of the 100-hectare area have burned out and been extinguished, while the fire continues in other places. The mayor of Venray, Michiel Uitdehaag, said the firefighting was expected to continue at least until 9am on Wednesday. “Fortunately, there is still no material damage in the form of buildings that have burned down, and no personal injury,” he said.

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A dry, fire-prone summer

The blaze fits the pattern of a summer that has left the Netherlands unusually dry. The country has been in an official water shortage, with weeks of drought, low rivers and repeated heat, conditions in which a spark in a pine forest can escalate rapidly. It comes as large wildfires have burned across southern Europe this summer, in countries including Spain and France, to which Dutch firefighters were sent to help. This fire is far smaller than those, but it is a reminder that the Netherlands is not immune.

This is a developing story, and the details above reflect the situation as of Tuesday morning.