The public stands to lose its legal protection against excessive noise from Amsterdam’s Schiphol airport, according to leaks from a confidential report obtained by the Volkskrant.

Residents currently have the right to go to court if noise from the airport exceeds a legally fixed maximum.
However, this legal protection could be scrapped and replaced by ‘agreements’ between the aviation sector and residents, the paper says, quoting from recommendations drawn up by former government minister Hans Alders.
‘The advice is the worst imaginable scenario for residents. It means that a million people around Schiphol will be sitting targets for noise made by planes,’ says Guus Berkhout, a noise specialist at Delft University who has seen the recommendations. He describes the proposal as ‘shameful’ in the Volkskrant.
Berkhout was chairman of a committee set up by the government in 2000 to investigate noise nuisance from planes but resigned two years later saying he was unable to carry out his work ‘independently and freely’, the paper says.
Alders has declined to comment on the criticism, says the Volkskrant. He told the paper that a definitive version of recommendations will not be finalised until Tuesday and everything is open for discussion until then.
Alders’ recommendations have been drawn up by representatives from Schiphol airport, various airlines, local governments and residents’ groups. According to the Volkskrant, the residents’ groups have walked out of the discussions.
Erwin von der Meer, who represents 27 local residents’ groups at the talks, told the paper: ‘What Alders wants to recommend to the cabinet is immoral. I will not put my name on a proposal that leaves residents to the mercy of the [aviation] sector’.
The government asked Alders to come up with proposals on how Schiphol can expand while limiting noise hindrance to residents.