“Now I have to weigh my words.” Margreet van Driel has just spoken freely for an hour about what municipalities face in asylum reception. But as soon as the conversation turns to the PVV, the mayor of Papendrecht falls silent.
That’s not so strange.
The PVV became the largest in Papendrecht in March and will now form a council with the VVD and Onhouden Papendrecht. At the same time, the party has campaigned in recent years against an asylum seeker center in the municipality and against the mayor himself. Current PVV faction leader Nikita de Ruiter sowed doubt about her integrity in petitions and on social media. The mayor then received online threats, for which a man was arrested.
Now the remarkable situation awaits that Van Driel may soon be in a college with the driving force behind the campaign against her.
“A consequence of the elections. That is democracy,” she says measuredly in her office in the municipal office.
New colleges
In dozens of municipalities, parties that opposed local asylum seekers’ center plans won in municipal elections. While the vast majority of municipalities are still negotiating a new council, plans must already be made for new asylum reception facilities. Provinces must submit those plans to Minister of Asylum and Migration Bart van den Brink (CDA) before December 1, as prescribed by the dispersal law.
The coming months are therefore crucial: municipalities must sit down together to arrive at a balanced distribution of the reception of asylum seekers.
In addition to being mayor, Margreet van Driel is also chairman of one of the so-called regional management tables, where ten municipalities in the south of South Holland make agreements about new shelters. In the province of South Holland alone, about eleven thousand more need to be found before the summer of 2027.
For all these new shelters, municipalities must first have “support” from the council and residents, says Van Driel. And that conflicts with the hard deadlines and numbers prescribed by the distribution law. “I think it is good that this law exists. But I also think that you cannot simply ignore the timing and planning of municipalities,” she says.
A lot has to be arranged before the establishment of a new asylum center. From permits to getting the municipal council and local residents on board. “I see municipalities really working hard to meet the task. But you can’t break iron with hands.”
The distribution law does assume hard deadlines. Should that be different?
“I don’t think you should rush asylum reception. Last week I received a ministerial letter that doesn’t really make me happy.” She takes out her tablet and opens a letter from Minister Van den Brink. “It says here that Papendrecht was commissioned for the distribution law [164 opvangplekken voor juli 2025] has not achieved. Well, that’s right. But we have created a shelter for eighty minor refugees here. If you are only told: ‘it didn’t work out’, it feels like a denial of what municipalities do. We don’t need to be reprimanded. Municipalities are not little children.”
“I think that many municipalities have a very good story as to why they have not yet reached that point. Lack of space, for example. South Holland is the most populous province in the Netherlands. Yet most asylum seekers have to be accommodated here. Does that make sense? The more inhabitants, the more asylum seekers you have to accommodate?”
Aren’t you a bit naive about the willingness of municipalities to receive asylum seekers? The COA is struggling with a shortage of places, partly because municipalities keep postponing their asylum seekers’ center plans.
“At the regional steering table, where ten aldermen sit together, we check whether there is indeed a postponement, or whether it is simply a matter of adjustment. Then I ask such an alderman: how can we help you, where are you stuck? One alderman is faced with, let’s say, a difficult municipal council. The next has no place in his municipality. The third has a lot of opposition from the community. We all have something. At the consultation table we look for support from each other and it is also checked whether we can can exchange things: for example, one municipality receives asylum seekers for the other municipality, which then takes over status holders from the other.”
Margreet van Driel, the mayor of Papendrecht, is also chairman of the regional steering table, where ten municipalities discuss asylum reception.
Photo Merlijn Doomernik
‘Double role’
Her chairmanship of this regional consultation has made Van Driel a target of Nikita de Ruiter over the past two years. As a resident, the Papendrecht woman led the resistance against the shelter for minors. She started two petitions and in 2025 received permission from Geert Wilders to set up a PVV faction in Papendrecht.
Even before the election campaign, De Ruiter repeatedly stated that the mayor would have a “double role” in the reception issue. The mayor’s additional position would raise “serious questions” about “purity of role and weighing of interests”. By chairing the regional consultation, she would place the importance of sufficient asylum reception places above the interests of the Papendrecht population, De Ruiter believed. The local PVV even made a point of it election manifesto. The party wants a “mayor elected by the residents who does not engage in politics,” it says.
Under a post from the municipality of Papendrecht in September 2025, De Ruiter wrote that the mayor himself benefits from the reception of refugees. “Kaching!” she wrote, accompanied by a money bag emoji. “It’s nice to fill your pockets before you retire,” she wrote later. “The fact that an entire village is being wiped out is a small thing for her.”
At the beginning of this year, Van Driel said in her New Year’s speech that Papendrecht does not yet comply with the dispersal law. “We are really not done with receiving refugees yet.” Under a news article from AD De Dordtenaar Nikita de Ruiter called the speech “disgusting” and a “shameless display”. Once again she wrote about the mayor’s alleged “double hat”. In other responses under the article, Van Driel was called a “sick left-wing person” and a “tacky woman”, among other things, who should be looked up at home.
At the end of January, the police arrested a 72-year-old man from Waalwijk for making threats under the Facebook message. He is suspected of coercion, incitement, threatening and insulting the mayor.
There are “many misunderstandings” about her role as chairman of the consultation, says Van Driel, when asked about the reactions to her speech. “I would wear all different hats. The truth is that as chairman of the management consultation I do not make any decisions at all. I have no mandate, no voting rights, I simply chair a meeting without pay, where the Asylum Councilor of Papendrecht sits down to represent the interests of Papendrecht. But the image has been created that the mayor is employed by the COA and makes money from the refugee issue. That was very annoying. It does have a dent in the office of the mayor. Because it implies that I have a personal interest in something while that is not the case.”
The PVV also participated in this.
“Yes, the lady who became party leader initiated this.”
It seems difficult to me to sit in a lecture with someone like that.
“It is quite a special situation. But as mayor I stand above the parties, I am not responsible for the nomination of aldermen. My interest is to be able to lead a stable council that adheres to the law. I think I can play a good role in that. But of course there is still something to be repaired.”
But is that possible: working with someone who has portrayed you as an evil, dishonest figure?
“Statements have been made about me by Mrs. De Ruiter even though she did not know me personally. Then I think: well, that is outside. Should I concern myself with that? My office and my residents ask me to rise above that.”
Have you already met?
“After the elections, I personally met all council members. And if a coalition is reached, we will have a robust discussion with the three faction leaders about the agreement and collegial cooperation. Because these will soon be my administrators. They must show step by step how they deal with that office, and I will help and coach them in this. I now consider that my task.”