If the legal options have been exhausted, you can always explore the edges of the law. When it comes to tackling asylum migration, that no longer seems to be a taboo at the formation table. PVV, VVD, NSC and BBB discussed the subject of asylum again on Tuesday and this was the issue, sources around the formation confirmed after reports from News houralso the far-reaching proposal on the table to declare the asylum problem a national crisis.
As a result, the Netherlands would temporarily not have to process asylum applications. A legally very controversial proposal, which experts believe will not stand up in European courts.
It is not surprising that the forming parties are still exploring this questionable approach to asylum, given the sensitivity of the theme. Last week, PVV leader Geert Wilders left an earlier conversation about asylum and migration angry because he felt that the ideas of the other parties did not go far enough. “I’m done with just making concessions. They have to deliver now,” Wilders wrote on X.
The PVV leader would prefer that no more asylum seekers come to the Netherlands at all (an asylum stop), but international treaties and European law give people the right to apply for asylum here. The VVD, and certainly NSC, do not want to simply change these international obligations.
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“I’m done making concessions,” Wilders said, after which he left the formation meeting on asylum and migration
Extraordinary circumstances
The idea of declaring the asylum problem a crisis is not new. At the request of the House of Representatives, State Secretary Eric van der Burg (Justice and Security, VVD) already looked into the possibility of temporarily not assessing asylum applications in 2022, also known as an ‘asylum decision freeze’. The Aliens Act contains an article that allows such a stop to be declared in theory, but according to the text of the law this is only possible “in the event of war or extraordinary circumstances”. Van der Burg wrote in a letter to Parliament that this remedy can only be applied in “very exceptional situations”, such as a flood disaster in addition to war.
During the corona pandemic, the asylum procedure was suspended for some time to prevent the risk of infection among employees and asylum seekers. Van der Burg wrote in the letter that the situation surrounding asylum over the past year has “a different character”. Yet informant Richard van Zwol seems to want to look at that period. He said on Tuesday after the talks that the Netherlands “has practiced a lot with crisis legislation and regulations during the Covid period”.
According to Van der Burg, higher numbers of asylum seekers did not meet this definition. He wrote about “problems of a structural nature, such as the bottlenecks in the regular reception of foreigners.” These are partly caused by the fact that many municipalities do not want to receive any or few asylum seekers.
source around the formation There is always a left-wing professor who says something is not possible
The numbers of asylum seekers are also not at a historically high level. Last year, according to Vluchtelingenwerk Nederland, more than 38,000 people applied for asylum in the Netherlands, which is less than the peak of almost 60,000 people in 2015 during the war in Syria.
Just before the elections, the Migration Advisory Council also called on politicians in an advisory report not to continue to label the asylum problem as a crisis. “The continuous crisis approach is at the expense of the quality of reception and gives asylum seekers a false start. This approach also puts constant pressure on social and political support for shelter.”
Major legal risks
Declaring asylum a national crisis without proper substantiation also has major legal risks for the next government. The European Court of Justice ruled in June 2022 that EU member states may not deny asylum seekers the right to submit an individual asylum application even in the event of “a declaration of an emergency due to a massive influx of foreigners”. This increases the chance that the Netherlands would lose any legal cases.
The forming parties thus risk announcing measures that ultimately do not have the intended effect. This also happened to the current cabinet recently, when the right to family reunification for family members traveling to join the family was temporarily suspended in 2022. This measure was subsequently rejected by several judges because limiting family reunification in this way turned out to be contrary to the Dutch Aliens Act, European legislation and international law.
Some forming parties said on Tuesday that they do not want to be deterred by possible legal obstacles. There are more and more examples abroad of countries taking unorthodox asylum measures. For example, Italy declared a state of emergency at the end of 2022 and Belgium decided to no longer offer shelter to single male asylum seekers. Just this week, the British Parliament supported a new emergency law that makes it possible to send asylum seekers to Rwanda, while the British Supreme Court previously found this unlawful.
It remains to be seen whether the Netherlands will actually move in that direction; decisions on the asylum approach had not yet been made on Tuesday. It is clear that a number of parties at the table are looking for legal solutions. “The fact that a judge may be able to ban something is no reason not to try,” said a source close to the formation. “There is always a left-wing professor who says something is not possible.” The party for which legal experiments are most difficult is Pieter Omtzigt’s NSC. He did not want to respond to the leaked proposals on Tuesday, but did say: “You know our starting point: we stand for the rule of law.”
With the cooperation of Wafa Al Ali.
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