My understanding is that there had also been protests in favour of the airport!
What if a flight is running late? If it had to divert elsewhere, this would not just inconvenience the passengers, but it would also mean a disturbance elsewhere, and then again first thing in the morning, creating two sets of movements instead of one, not to mention that such positioning flights are also extremely wasteful.
What would happen to early morning ops if a whole batch of flights can't load as they are still awaiting the inbound?
As is often pointed out over here, well meaning legislation can end up being extremely counter-productive if it is taken too far.
On the other hand, I remember whole host of MPs pusing not too long ago for a European wide night flight ban. They all signed up for it here due to freight ops over CVT - completely forgetting that the place for such decisions should always be the local planning authority.
The last thing we need on this is the heavy clunk of the EU fist wiping out all nighttime movements, some of which have an extremely important impact on things we take for granted, like all those orders from Amazon.com.