RIGHT TO PLAY: Kids are alright, says German noise law

Summary: Germany rewrites law to allow kindergartens and playgrounds to be set up in residential areas without special permission.

For years they have been trying – and often succeeding – to gag the nation's children, complaining that the din the young folk make is as much of an environmental nuisance as motorway traffic or the pounding beat of a disco.

But Germany's anti-child campaigners who fervently believe the next generation should be seen and not heard – at least not in their backyards – are finally being slapped down by new legislation on its way through parliament which is designed to protect children's right to be children.

Under the rewritten emissions protection law, play groups, kindergartens and playgrounds will soon be allowed in residential areas without special permission. Until now, local councils that wanted to set up childcare or play facilities had to apply for an exemption from the law that ranked kinderlärm on the same level as drunken louts or pneumatic drills.

It took the objections of just a handful of neighbours for planning requests to be turned down, leaving many authorities at a loss as to where to care for children other than on the outskirts of towns or in other arguably unsuitable locations, such as red-light districts.

"The noise children make does not have a damaging effect on the environment and neither is it something from which citizens need to be protected by the law," said Peter Ramsauer, the government's minister for construction and transport. "This is why we're changing the law."

Under the changes, children's noise will in future be classed in the same noise exemption category as church bells, harvest work and the clearing of icy paths.

Hermann Kues, parliamentary state secretary for the family ministry, said the law was a long-overdue attempt to ensure that children became a more accepted part of society in a country where noise levels are regulated more strictly than anywhere else in the world.

"Tolerance and acceptance towards the laughing, screeching, singing and cries of children must be considered an absolute normality," he said.

The decision follows years of legal battles between residents and local authorities over attempts to control when, where and for how long children are allowed to be heard. In one recent case a kindergarten in a lakeside district on the outskirts of Berlin was burnt down in an arson attack alleged to have been started by residents angered by the noise it produced.

Last year a Berlin kindergarten was forced to move to another premises after a legal complaint brought against it by local residents.

Those behind the revision say a change has been needed for some time, not least since the government's announcement that it would expand the number of childcare places by 750,000 by 2013, one of several attempts to make Germany more child-friendly.

Further information

• CRIN REVIEW 22: Children's Right to the City (September 2008)