Climate activists from Extinction Rebellion Netherlands protest against ING on a highway in Amsterdam, Netherlands on 30 December 2023 in this picture obtained from social media. Photo: Extinction Rebellion Netherlands / REUTERS
Climate activists from Extinction Rebellion Netherlands protest against ING on a highway in Amsterdam, Netherlands on 30 December 2023 in this picture obtained from social media. Photo: Extinction Rebellion Netherlands / REUTERS

By Bart Meijer
31 December 2023

AMSTERDAM (Reuters) – Around 300 climate activists were held by police in Amsterdam on Saturday for blocking a major highway in the Dutch capital for several hours to demand an immediate end to the financing of fossil fuel projects by the country’s largest bank, ING (INGA.AS).

Hundreds of activists walked onto the A10 highway to the south of the city at about noon (1100 GMT), police said, after road authorities had shut the road down to avoid casualties.

Organised by the Extinction Rebellion group, the protest took place at the site of the former headquarters of ING, which the climate activists said is the main financer of fossil fuel projects in the Netherlands.

ING said earlier this month it would stop financing oil and gas exploration and production by 2040 and triple new lending to renewable energy over the next two years as part of an updated climate strategy.

But the protesters said this was not enough, calling on the bank to immediately ditch all fossil projects.

ING called those demands “radical and unrealistic” and said Extinction Rebellion’s actions were “unacceptable”, as it referred to prior protests at ING offices where the bank said employees had been intimidated.

“The capacity and infrastructure to quickly switch to 100% renewable energy simply is not there yet,” ING said. “We want to be part of the solution, instead of opting for the easy way out of fossil fuels.”

Images on local TV station AT5 showed protesters including children and elderly people peacefully sitting and walking on the highway, waving banners and flags.

Police started picking up protesters from the road one by one about three hours after the start of the demonstration. The activists were put on buses and taken to another part of town, where most of them were set free again.

Amsterdam’s city council had banned the A10 protest, instead allocating a nearby field for the demonstration, but protesters climbed up the embankment and onto the highway.

Climate activists block Amsterdam highway in protest against ING