Officials issued negative advice on emergency asylum law: ‘mood-mongering’

Officials of former minister Marjolein Faber (Asylum and Migration, PVV) did not support her “compelling motivation” for using emergency law to implement stricter asylum measures. This became apparent on Wednesday pieces that were released in reliance on the Open Government Act (Woo). Officials speak of ‘mongering’, ‘grabbing for arguments’ and ‘fact-free’ talk about ‘scare-inducing developments without a single source statement to substantiate this’.

Already in the main agreement of July 2024, the Schoof cabinet (PVV, VVD, NSC, BBB) agreed that state emergency law could be used to quickly introduce a stricter asylum policy. The state emergency law is a heavy means with which the Senate and House of Representatives can be (temporarily) bypassed when introducing new laws. There must then be exceptional circumstances. The idea of ​​the previous government was to declare an ‘asylum crisis’. NSC had agreed on the condition that such an emergency law would be “substantiated”. Which means legally tenable.

In the autumn of 2024, tensions about this between PVV and NSC increased increasingly. Faber was keen to continue with the plans and continued to say that her supporting motivation was almost ready. NSC began to have more and more doubts, because all kinds of experts questioned the plans and the application of state emergency law.

Woo docs

The Woo documents released on Wednesday show that officials informed Minister Faber as early as August 2024 that it would be “not easy” to arrive at a “legally tenable substantiation” and that it was “doubtful” whether there were “extraordinary circumstances”. Nevertheless, then Prime Minister Dick Schoof (non-party) said when presenting the government program in September 2024 that there was indeed a crisis, which meant that state emergency law could be deployed. He pointed out the great difficulty the asylum chain had in “keeping up” with the influx of asylum seekers.

In the same month, officials responded to Faber’s first draft of the supporting motivation. They were very critical of the arguments presented and issued a negative advice. For example, the cabinet wrote in its motivation: “Support among the local population for offering asylum protection is decreasing and social unrest is increasing,” to which the officials responded with: “Sources? That is a statement you can make as a Member of Parliament, but as a minister you will have to provide some harder data to substantiate the extraordinary measure of Article 110.”

The government’s motivation also continually pointed out how Dutch people ‘experience’ matters relating to asylum. Officials wrote about this in their response: “The government cannot rely on an argument ‘that people experience it this way’. The government should not rely on feelings of unrest.”

Advice from civil servants

The officials subsequently advised the minister several times to opt for an emergency legislative procedure in which parliament is not sidelined. But Minister Faber ignored that advice and continued to maintain to the outside world that the underlying motivation for the emergency law procedure was almost complete. It was not only far from round; it was never even published.

In October 2024, tensions between PVV and NSC rose so high that the parties ended up in weeks of crisis consultations. Ultimately, they reached a compromise: they would not go for an emergency law, but for an emergency law.

This led to the ’emergency asylum measures law’, which was voted down by the Senate last month. This law was supposed to regulate, among other things, restrictions on family reunification, shorter residence permits (from five to three years) and the cancellation of the permanent residence permit. The cabinet is now working on a new law.

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