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[title]Having lived in Amsterdam for six years, I’ve come to appreciate the city’s many quirks. The constant chime of bike bells. The ever-present waft of weed. Lost, stoned tourists. And glorious, fishy herring stands: a ubiquitous sight across the city, where counters are stacked with glistening fillets of brined fish and sun-faded signs advertise nieuwe haring, broodje paling or verse kibbeling.
So intrinsic are these little street-side shacks to Dutch culture that even the practice of eating herring on the street has its own name: ‘haringhappen’. You’ll see locals surrounding their favourite cart, dangling the elongated flesh from their fingers and gobbling down the fatty meat in a few bites.
But thanks to an EU ruling adopted by Amsterdam’s council, the city’s herring stands are under serious threat.
A new ‘lottery’ system for running a kiosk
Until now, Amsterdam’s kiosks have long had permanent licences to hawk their wares. This means that business owners — whether they’re selling herring, hot dogs, or flowers — have the right to stay in their location as long as they desire. Anyone wanting one of these spots signs up to a waiting list, and often waits decades for their opportunity.
The EU, though, isn’t a fan. It believes this untethered approach to licensing stifles market competition, and has made moves to stop the practice. This has led to new rules in the European Services Directive stating that 'scarce public permits' should no longer be permanent.
The outcome could be the disappearance of Amsterdam’s herring stands.
In the next two years, stall licences will be changed from permanent to temporary. Instead of a waiting list, what’s proposed is a lottery, where after a specific timeframe has passed – thought to be around 10 years — the public spot in the city will be raffled off again. The current owner of the site will have no better chance of retaining their business than anyone else.
While this could, in theory, make things fairer for business owners, that viewpoint naively overlooks the reality of a city like Amsterdam.
Anyone who has strolled around the Dutch capital in recent years will be well aware of the explosion of tacky, tourist-centric shops. These stores often sell souvenirs or sugary snacks, and they have swallowed up real estate that could add to the city’s character and charm, rather than making it a Disneyland for tourists.
More likely than not, it’ll be these sorts of tourist-catering businesses that replace the herring stands – meaning the erasure of an integral part of Amsterdam’s culture.
A potted history of Dutch herring
‘Stands with fermented products go back to the year 1700,’ says Hans van Tellingen, a Dutch retail expert and author. He explains that, in this era, Amsterdam was home to Western Europe’s largest Jewish community, who introduced this style of fermenting to the country.
Not long after, fishermen began using the same technique to preserve herring. As time progressed, the Dutch developed a palette for this sort of fermented fare, ‘even when conserving food in this manner wasn’t necessary anymore.’
This is why herring stands still exist in Amsterdam today: they reflect a Dutch taste that has lasted for hundreds of years. Even the stands themselves are institutions. As van Tellingen explains, they ‘are often family businesses that go down decades or even more than a century.’
Despite Amsterdam natives seeing the stands as part of the city’s heritage, the number of stalls selling the brined snack has dwindled as Amsterdam has developed into a tourist hub. ‘There are only nineteen herring stands left in Amsterdam,’ van Tellingen says. ‘And European coercive policies … will lead to [their] extinction.’
Curious to know what the owners of Amsterdam’s herring stands think of the upcoming regulation, I spoke to Denniz Zengerink, the owner of Haring & Zo just off Dam Square in the centre of Amsterdam.
‘What do you think?’ said Zengerink. But as our conversation went on, he expressed that he isn’t entirely against altering the system. ‘If you want to change the permit, change it for new people.’
While Zengerink believes those who started businesses under the promises of permanent leases should be allowed to keep their kisoks, he pointed out that many of the city’s herring stand owners are getting older, some into their 70s. This has led to some ‘closing their stores for two or three days [a week].’ As a balance, he suggested removing people’s permits when they reach retirement age, opening things up for a new generation of herring stand owners to come in.
There was one thing Zengerink was crystal clear about though: herring stalls are ‘huge’ for Amsterdam, and they shouldn’t be replaced by rubber duck stores or tourist shops.
It’s a sentiment echoed by Cornelius Jonk, the owner of Haringhandel Jonk, on Spui. ‘We’ve been here 30 years,’ he says. ‘It wouldn’t be a good thing to put another shop here selling candies.’
With Dutch people consuming and buying herring for generations, it’s hard to overstate the attachment they have to the snack and the stalls from which they’re sold.
While chatting with Jonk, a young woman picking up a zalm broodje (a smoked salmon sandwich), she tells me her parents brought her to the stalls when she was young, a tradition she carries on to this day.
It’s hard to overstate the attachment Dutch people have to herring
‘Losing them would be terrible,’ she says. Asked what can be done to save the stalls, Jonk was clear on her stance. ‘Keep it as it is.’
This echoes van Tellingen’s thoughts. ‘In Dutch we have the expression De wal keert het schip (‘the shore turns the ship’), which means something like: if enough people stand up against foolish policy, politicians will eventually listen.’
He believes that if enough Amsterdammers resist this directive from the EU, the local government will listen — and there is some evidence this could be successful.
The same sort of suggested permit lottery system was meant to be rolled out in Utrecht, the fourth most populous city in the Netherlands – but, according to van Tellingen, ‘the stall entrepreneurs managed to alter the policies, so they can stay now.’ Local pushback from people in Utrecht meant that the policy was altered to reflect the stall’s legacy in the neighbourhood, with a stallholder’s connection to the area being a decisive criterion in the application process.
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Whether this can – or indeed will – happen in Amsterdam is another question. Although there is clearly some public aversion to this change in permits, the new policies are complicated and technical enough that a mass public reaction may not happen. Amsterdam’s long battle against overtourism has led to a sense of fatigue among local residents who may feel the city has more pressing problems to tackle. Plus, in such a tourist-dense city, entrepreneurial competition for these stalls will be a lot tougher.
Like canals, narrow buildings, and coffeeshops, herring stalls are a part of Amsterdam’s timeless allure. Losing this part of the city’s culture to European bureaucracy would be a negative for both locals and visitors. So, next time you visit the Dutch capital, hit up a stand and try some herring. It may be your final chance.
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