The EU is set to crack down on high-powered fireworks with new legislation, according to a letter the commission reportedly sent to governments including the Netherlands.
The message follows an urgent appeal made last month to Brussels by member states where fireworks are increasingly used in explosive attacks.
According to broadcaster NOS, the commission also contacted the Swedish and French governments to say it shares their concerns over criminal misuse of fireworks and favours much tighter restrictions.
One focus of scrutiny is the cobra, an Italian-manufactured flash banger that has a blast roughly equivalent to a hand grenade. The Netherlands banned its possession and use in 2020, but production remains legal in Italy and several other member states.
A proposal for new legislation will be filed within the course of the next year, it said, after which the bloc will need to vote – meaning enforcement of any new rules could take until 2030.
The Hague has spent more than a year pressing Brussels for production-side rules: a track-and-trace system, a cap on flash powder amounts, and an outright ban on the manufacture of cobras and similar flash bangers anywhere in the EU.
Firework bomb capital
The Netherlands records more fireworks-bomb attacks than any other country in Europe. Police logged 1,525 attacks or attempted attacks on homes, businesses and vehicles in 2025. That is up from around 200 in 2021 – a more than 600% increase.
In more than 500 of last year’s cases, the attackers taped fireworks to a bottle of petrol, producing intense fires alongside the blast. Attacks are often carried out by organised crime groups, who use teenagers with an average age of 16, typically recruited through apps such as Telegram, to target rivals and rob ATMs.
In other cases the attacks stem from domestic or social disputes and have resulted in disasters including the Tarwekamp explosion in The Hague in December 2024, in which six people died and five flats were destroyed. One eight-year-old survivor lost his parents and sister.
Cross-border sales
This year’s New Year brought two more fatal incidents, in Nijmegen and Aalsmeer, alongside a fire that destroyed Amsterdam’s Vondelkerk.
Plastic surgeons say hands have to be partly or fully amputated in 80% of Cobra 6 accidents. The average age of victims has fallen from 23 to 13 in the last five years.
The fireworks used in these attacks are produced legally elsewhere in the EU – Italy, Poland, the Czech Republic – and trafficked into the Netherlands by a small group of cross-border wholesalers.
The consumer fireworks ban that takes effect at the end of 2026 will not touch this market, Rotterdam mayor and chair of the anti-explosions programme Offensief Tegen Explosies Carola Schouten has said.
