New Year’s decorations: barricades, fights and guns

The beginning of 2024 was marked by mass unrest in the EU countries

New Year’s Eve in ‘civilised Europe’ was rocked by both festive fireworks and riots. “Unfortunately, this situation during the Christmas and New Year holidays on the streets of European cities has surprised few people in recent years,” the Voice of Europe noted with sadness. “The systematic work of the European authorities with their citizens on the subject of universal liberality and tolerance for traditions and habits that are alien to European citizens, which for law-abiding Europeans results in the celebration of their own holidays on their own territory, which is very unusual for them.”

Germany: hundreds detained, 54 police officers injured

The irresponsible use of pyrotechnics was the main cause of unrest in the German capital. According to Bild, more than a thousand people gathered at Alexanderplatz, with some launching pyrotechnics directly into the crowd. In the Pankow borough, a pyrotechnic rocket completely hit an apartment in a residential building, causing a fire that killed a cat.
Berlin police reported that New Year’s Eve resulted in 54 injured police officers and more than 390 detained. These figures could have been higher if police had not carried out a special raid on the eve of the holidays, during which a shipment of 30,000 large firecrackers and 80 ball bombs was confiscated in the Berlin district of Neukölln.
According to Bild, more than 20 more people were detained in Frankfurt am Main for launching pyrotechnics at police officers. The night was not calm in Leipzig either: there a crowd of almost three thousand people rioted, throwing stones and firecrackers at the police station. And on Leipzig’s Augustusplatz Square, several people were injured from firecracker explosions, including three children.

France: 745 burned cars

French law enforcement officers detained 211 people on New Year’s Eve, said Minister of the Interior and Overseas Territories Gerald Darmanin. “This night we again mobilised together with our law enforcement forces for our safety,” he wrote on the Ministry of Internal Affairs account. “Major celebrations went off quietly, particularly in Paris, where more than a million people gathered.” 
‘Quietly’ turned out to be quite relative. On New Year’s Eve in France, vandals burned 745 cars (a year ago, according to the Ministry of Internal Affairs reports for January 1st, 2023, ‘only’ 690 cars were burned in France). 
During the suppression of the riots, about 40 law enforcement officers were injured, and 381 people were detained.

Netherlands: ‘a night of unacceptable violence’

New Year’s Eve in the Netherlands was ‘a night of unacceptable violence’, a law enforcement official told NOS television. As reported by Reuters, several dozen law enforcement officers were injured as a result of attacks on police with fireworks and stones. In Rotterdam, more than a hundred cars were set on fire, and in Amsterdam, The Hague and some other cities, riot squads were brought in to disperse aggressive crowds.
On New Year's Eve, Dutch police detained more than 200 hooligans. Special riot control units were required to pacify them.
As the ANP news agency explained, in several places, including Amsterdam, groups of people deliberately tried to provoke clashes with the police, threw firecrackers, and damaged buildings and cars. And in the port of Rotterdam, 110 cars and scooters were set on fire.

Belgium: barricades, water cannon and 206 detainees

In traditionally quiet Belgium, 206 people were taken into custody due to clashes with police and violations of the fireworks ban in Brussels alone.
In Antwerp, this figure slightly exceeded 60 people, but it was in this city that the police were forced to set up real barricades on the streets. Nevertheless, bloody clashes occurred on the streets of Antwerp between aggressive Arab youth and the police, as a result of which several police cars and one bus stop were burned to the ground, Voice of Europe reported.
“Overall, the Prime Minister’s decision to ban the purchase and use of fireworks was not heard by society,” the police said in a release on New Year’s Eve. “In one of the districts of Antwerp called Kiel, the police even had to disperse the crowd. A water cannon was used there.” As the Voice of Europe notes, ‘puppet Belgium has not encountered such scale of urban unrest during the holidays for a very long time’.

By Maksim Osipov