Residents of a popular European city have launched legal action against their council for welcoming too many tourists. The citizens’ group ‘Amsterdam has a choice’ called for higher tourist taxes after filing the lawsuit over what it believed was a failure to curb unsustainable visitor numbers.

The group, which is supported by 12 other residents’ organisations, argued that authorities are not complying with their own legislation to curb overnight stays to 20 million per year, set in 2021. “Overnight stays have been exceeding the agreed 20 million for three years without the municipality taking effective measures,” said Jasper van Dijk, one of the residents who filed the lawsuit.

Last year, the target was exceeded with 22.9 million overnight stays, a 3% increase from the previous year, however, the authority said it was lower than predictions due to tourism management measures.

The group acknowledged the council had tried to tackle tourism with measures like tourist tax, which is now the highest in Europe at 12.5% of hotel stays. However, campaigners want the city to raise the tariff again.

“Amsterdam could use the significant additional revenue from the increased tourist tax to buy properties to help with the housing shortage or to rid the city of the street litter created in part by mass tourism,” Van Dijk said.

The group also proposed banning tourists from cannabis cafés, as is the case in the rest of the country, and buying back hotel permits to reduce capacity, reports EuroNews.

Members raised €50,000 to fund the legal case, and the group served the official summons to the council on Monday.

City tourism chief Sofyan Mbarki acknowledged residents’ frustrations, but said that tackling excessive tourism will take time. “There is no single button we can press to solve everything in one go,” he told Dutch outlet Parool.

The city has already launched a “stay away” campaign to discourage tourists from visiting Amsterdam solely for drugs and partying, and it introduced stricter rules for river cruises to halve numbers.