Timmermans showed his dissatisfaction with the adopted stricter asylum laws loud and clear last week. He shouted through the room against Boomsma words like ‘Huffelaar’ and ‘Do you already have your application for the PVV ready?’ On Thursday, Timmermans will not take those words back. “Yes, I said that,” and even adds a little by Boomsma to call it “hypocritical” and “hypocritical.”
Big tap to NSC and Boomsma
“We hold each other, and don’t let anyone go,” Timmermans regularly says about ‘everyone in the Netherlands who defends the rule of law’. Nevertheless, he distributes a big slap to NSC and Boomsma. “If you say you are for sound administration and you go along with these plans from Wilders who are totally at odds with what I find and what is good governance in the Netherlands, then you get this qualification from me,” he sniffs. “You can’t like that, but I support that square.”
Caroline van der Plas and Diederik Boomsma see it with their own eyes: it is full of sharks off the Dutch coast!
It took a lot of effort and a lot of chaos to get the asylum measurement measures law through the House of Representatives. With that law, asylum permits are temporarily limited and family reunification is limited. In principle, there was a large majority for it, but the support staggered after a proposal from the PVV was adopted to criminalize illegality. That could be done by a Keti Koti blunder from GL/PvdA and the animal party, of which MPs missed the mood to be at the commemoration of the history of slavery.
No apology
“I am not going to apologize for participating in a national commemoration,” says Timmermans. “If the prime minister is there, I think that as chairman of a large group in the room I can also be there.”
Chaos trumps around asylum laws on last day for political recess
Nevertheless, Timmermans does not reflect on his own performance that day, but tries to shift the fault of the adopted PVV proposal to other parties. “We had been told by a number of parties that they would not vote for any amendment,” wraps the GL/PvdA leader around him.
Whether the stricter asylum law also comes through the Senate is by no means certain. Among other things, the SGP, which has an important position there, expressed concerns about the consequences of the asylum measures law. The party does not want all assistance to illegal immigrants and first wants clarity about the scope of the law.