Vilvorde mayor wants law requiring cafe owners to know Dutch

Vilvorde mayor wants law requiring cafe owners to know Dutch

Vilvorde Mayor Hans Bonte wants the granting of licenses for cafés and gaming establishments to be conditioned on knowledge of Dutch by their would-be operators. Bonte was quoted as saying this by De Standaard daily and confirmed his statements to the Belga news agency.“The Canal Plan includes stricter monitoring of sectors that generate crime. For the moment, cafés and gaming establishments cannot be sufficiently monitored because, in a number of cases, the operators do not speak Dutch,” noted the mayor, who hails from the Flemish Social Democratic, SP.A, party.

“It is also necessary to know Dutch to have a good understanding of our regulations; I am therefore calling for the law to provide such a linguistic rule, specifically for cafés and gaming establishments,” added Bonte, whose municipality is just north of Brussels.

The politician, who said he would soon submit a proposal for a law to that effect in the Chambers, stressed that better monitoring of cafés and gaming establishments would help improve the fight against the laundering of money from hidden labour, organized gangs, drugs and public drunkenness. Links between these illegal practices and terrorism have also been observed in the past, he added.


The Brussels Times


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