A third of Dutch municipalities haven't taken in a single asylum seeker in years: report

Almost a third of Dutch municipalities - 111 of the 342 - have not sheltered a single asylum seeker in the past 12 years, RTV Noord reports based on figures provided by the Central Agency for the Reception of Asylum seekers. Remarkably, several municipalities that say they don’t have room to take in asylum seekers did have room to shelter Ukrainian refugees, the broadcaster found.

Today, the Dutch Senate will debate the asylum distribution law, with which the central government can force municipalities to take in a fair share of asylum seekers. The law is needed because the asylum registration center in Ter Apel is structurally overcrowded. And the COA is dependent on increasingly reluctant municipalities to create shelter space so that Ter Apel can be relieved.

Groningen and Drenthe are the best-performing provinces - each of their municipalities is sheltering asylum seekers. In Utrecht, half of the 26 municipalities have dodged opening asylum shelters. The same applies to 21 Noord-Holland municipalities (48 percent of the total), 22 in Noord-Brabant (39 percent), and 18 in Gelderland (35 percent).

Friesland has eight municipalities that haven’t sheltered asylum seekers in years (44 percent of the total), but they’re mainly on the Wadden Islands. Sheltering asylum seekers here is complicated due to the location.

In Overijssel, only two municipalities aren’t sheltering asylum seekers. In Flefloand, a province with only six municipalities, only Urk hasn’t done anything regarding asylum shelters in the past 12 years.

Remarkably, RTV Noord found that several municipalities don’t shelter any asylum seekers, but did take in Ukranian refugees. One such is Rozendaal. Mayor Ester Weststeijn of Roozendaal told the broadcaster that this has to do “with the fact that when we took in Ukrainians, we still thought it would be four a short period. The reception of asylum seekers usually involves a longer period.”

She said that Roozendaal would like to accommodate asylum seekers. “But we are a municipality with only 1,750 inhabitants without industrial estates or campsites around it. There is simply no room for it, no matter how much we would like to. If the distribution law is passed, we will only be dealing with six asylum seekers. That doesn’t make much difference,” Weststeijn said. “With the Ukrainians, we used a piece of private land. We thought it would be very temporary, but that turned out differently as the war continued.”

Children’s Ombudsman Margrite Kalverboer urged the Senate to adopt the distribution law to protect child asylum seekers. “The situation of children in asylum reception is hopeless and degrading,” she wrote in a letter to the Senate. And that seriously harms their development. “Although the distribution law is not ideal for children, I expect that children’s rights will be better guaranteed with the introduction of this law than without it.”