Prime Minister confirms new asylum measures; Distribution Act to be scrapped

Prime Minister Dick Schoof has confirmed in a letter to parliament that the Cabinet has reached an agreement on the asylum migration measures: there will be border controls from the end of November, and the Distribution Act will be dismissed soon. These measures are a part of the asylum package that the coalition parties agreed on in the evening of Thursday leading into Friday.

The Cabinet also wants to declare certain parts of Syria as safe as soon as possible. Asylum seekers from those safe areas will have no chance of asylum in the Netherlands. The government also wants to revoke asylum permits already issued to Syrians from areas that are designated as safe, which means they will have to return. It is being investigated whether this is possible.

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs is setting up a new official report about the situation in Syria. The goal is for this to be finished by the end of the year, and for it then to be handed over to the Ministry of Asylum and Migration, who will decide their policies based on it, Minister of Foreign Affairs Casper Veldkamp stated. "It is an objective, carefully drafted official report, and I have no substantive involvement in it."

It is currently the case that Syrians who have requested asylum here will not be sent back based on the current official report about Syria from August 2023. The European Court of Justice of the European Union in Luxembourg ruled earlier this month that it is not possible to declare part of a country of origin safe.

The Netherlands also wants to include only 200 people instead of 500 in the redistribution of refugees by the United Nations. Furthermore, illegal immigrants who are caught by the border controls will be sent back to Belgium or Germany.

In addition, the Cabinet does not want to obligate municipalities to arrange living areas for asylum seekers who have been granted temporary residence permits, otherwise known as status holders. “Austere reception” will be used for them.

The package will be discussed in the Eerste Kamer, which is the Senate, and the Tweede Kamer, the lower house of Dutch parliament. The Cabinet, with the PVV leading, wanted to circumvent parliament temporarily with their earlier plans as they felt it was an emergency situation. However, the Cabinet was not able to prove this, which led to them deciding to implement regular legislation.

The parties have agreed to deal with these laws as a matter of urgency. However, Schoof still describes it as an "asylum crisis" in his letter.

PVV leader Geert Wilders said that he “went as far as he can go.” He also said that he was proud of the end result. Wilders had threatened the fall of the Cabinet if the emergency law was not implemented in the past.

However, he has now changed his tone. "The way in which the measures are implemented is less important than that they are implemented. If this is not done through an emergency law, then it should be done through an urgent law.” An urgent law is a legislative bill the Cabinet sends to Parliament requesting an urgent debate and a rapid vote.

Taking the emergency law away was a “necessity” as it was designed to fail, the NSC wrote on their website. The coalition party’s interim leader, Nicolien van Vroonhoven, reached an agreement with Wilders after lengthy negotiations. NSC had opposed the plans for an emergency law. The other coalition parties, the BBB, and VVD agreed on the measures on Thursday evening.

Minister for Asylum Marjolein Faber has now been given the assignment of developing an urgent law rather than an emergency law. NSC were opponents of the emergency law as this is usually reserved for emergency situations like wars and natural disasters. The situation gained pace when it became apparent that the Senate also preferred an urgent law.

The agreements ensure that "we have a strict migration policy that is legally tenable and can go through normal parliamentary treatment," according to NSC. "This is more effective and ensures faster results."

Several experts question the legal tenability of some measures. Lynn Hillary (University of Amsterdam) and asylum lawyer Wil Eikelboom, for example, expect that the plans to reduce family reunification are not in line with the European Convention on Human Rights.