Anti-smoking lobby group Clean Air Nederland said on Monday it will challenge the government in court to bring in a complete ban on smoking in public buildings unless it takes urgent action.

CAN says it wrote to the government in February calling for the current ban on smoking to be widened and will go to court unless it gets a response in the next few weeks.

Last week, it emerged that cafe and bar owners are being given two years to close down the special smoking rooms they have set up to get round the ban on smoking within the hospitality industry.

‘The catering industry is right in complaining that it is a sort of victim,’ CAN chairman Tom Voeten told the Volkskrant. ‘Why has the catering industry been singled out?’

For example, he said, both houses of parliament have smoking rooms.

‘They have to go… a government which says it is striving to create a smoke free society needs to do everything it can to achieve this.’