Ter Apel asylum center overcrowding eased by moving refugee applicants to Biddinghuizen

A ruling ordering the Netherlands to permanently relieve overcrowding at the country’s main registration point for asylum seekers enters into force at 12:01 a.m. on Thursday. Dutch asylum agency COA will face a 15,000 euro fine for every day that there are more than 2,000 asylum seekers crammed into the temporary reception facility in Ter Apel. The Cabinet said on Wednesday their last-ditch effort to find a solution will involve relocating a higher number of people from Ter Apel, where 2,200 people were housed on Tuesday, to Biddinghuizen.

The temporary reception location in Biddinghuizen will take in an additional 240 asylum seekers from Ter Apel. The first 120 arrived on Tuesday, a spokesperson for the municipality of Dronten, which covers Biddinghuizen, said. Another 120 will arrive on Wednesday. The first buses with asylum seekers left the registration center in Ter Apel for Biddinghuizen at around 11:00 a.m. on Wednesday, a spokesperson for the Central Agency for the Reception of Asylum Seekers (COA) reported.

The asylum seekers will go to the temporary reception location on the Walibi Holland event site, where the COA may accommodate a total of 1,450 asylum seekers, the municipal spokesperson said. Until Tuesday, 1,040 asylum seekers were staying in Biddinghuizen. On Wednesday, that number will rise to 1,280, and on Thursday, to 1,400. The spokesperson could not say why the shelter isn’t used to capacity. “There is space in Biddinghuizen. Whether it will be used is up to COA.”

Biddinghuizen is temporarily taking in enough asylum seekers for the COA to meet its court-imposed deadline by accommodating these 240 people. After the deadline, Biddinghuizen will take in a maximum of 360 asylum seekers from Ter Apel.

The asylum shelter in Biddinghuizen is temporary. The event site must be returned empty to Walibi on April 7, the municipal spokesperson said. Other accommodation must be found for all 1,400 asylum seekers by then.

It was uncertain even on Wednesday morning whether COA would make the deadline to comply with the court order regarding the facility in the village of Ter Apel, which is located in the Groningen municipality of Westerwolde. The municipality filed its lawsuit against the agency after years of slow or stalled plans to ease the situation in Ter Apel.

The District Court in Groningen ruled in Westerwolde’s favor in January, saying that the limit of 2,000 residents must not be exceeded. The 15,000 euro daily penalty can be levied up to a maximum amount of 1.5 million euros. The penalty for such fines will be paid to Westerwolde.

The court ruling was issued on the same date that the Eerste Kamer, the Dutch Senate, passed a controversial bill about the distribution of asylum seekers in the Netherlands. The new law grants the national government more authority over provinces and municipalities to more evenly place asylum seekers in different