Overview

• On July 4, the City of Düsseldorf formally appealed to the Federal Waterways and Shipping Authority to impose a general bathing ban along its 42.1-kilometer stretch of the Rhine.
• NRW Interior Minister Herbert Reul argued that a swimming prohibition must be enforceable to be effective and urged adults to exercise greater caution instead of creating new laws.
• The Federal Waterways and Shipping Authority stated it has no competence to ban swimming on federal waterways and said such restrictions must be enacted by state governments.
• The DLRG warned that a blanket ban on the Rhine is impractical given the river’s size and called on the public to take existing multilingual warning signs seriously.
• The push for a ban follows a record summer spike in drownings, including multiple recent fatalities swept downriver and the recovery of a six-year-old boy’s body.