Mayors to arrange extra asylum shelter as long as Cabinet keeps its promises

The mayors on the Security Council will cooperate with arranging extra reception for asylum seekers as requested by the Cabinet. But then the government must fulfill the promises it made this week. If that doesn't happen soon, the security regions will stop their efforts, said mayor Hubert Bruls of Nijmegen, chairman of the Security Council.

The mayors expect the government to quickly provide the promised 30 extra civil servants per security region who have to help arrange the reception. In the next three months, the Cabinet must also work on a long-term perspective for asylum reception. Bruls called the agreement reached with the involved Ministers on Friday a “fragile agreement.”

The 25 security regions will each create 225 extra emergency shelter spots to relieve the overcrowded asylum registration center in Ter Apel. A few of the smaller regions may not quite reach that number, Bruls said. In addition, they’ll find housing for 7,500 refugees, who can then leave the asylum seekers’ centers so that there is space for new asylum seekers currently in the registration center. The Cabinet promised 40 million euros to realize housing for this group.

The Security Council emphasized on Friday that the extra crisis emergency shelter will end on October 1. By then, the Cabinet must have realized at least one new reception location in addition to Ter Apel, and preferably three more, said Bruls. The reception system must also become more flexible because “we have known since 2015 that this way does not work,” the Council chairman said.

According to Bruls, after many hesitations at the beginning of the week, the mayors agreed to cooperate because they all understand that someone needs to do something. “But the Cabinet must regain our trust. It is asking something very big of municipalities, even though this is not our task at all. Nor does it belong to the core tasks of a security region. We want to monitor the efforts of the central government every two weeks.” The mayors also made clear to the Ministers that this is really the last time that it can make “such an immense request.”

The Council of Ministers will discuss the Security Council’s positions on Friday afternoon. After that, they’ll inform parliament. The security regions will start working on this new task as soon as possible, Bruls said.