Judges back the right to... catcall

A BAN on catcalls in Rotterdam was overturned by a Dutch appeal court because it amounts to a possible breach of freedom of expression.

The port city brought in a law against street intimidation to clamp down on verbal abuse in public, but judges ruled it had overstepped its powers.

The appeal court in the Hague said it ‘respects the wish of Rotterdam to tackle this vulgarity’, but ruled that only the Dutch parliament had the power to criminalise such behaviour because doing so amounts to a possible infringement of the constitutionally enshrined right to freedom of expression.

The ruling came in a test case against a man accused of breaching the ban.