A petition has been started to convince State Secretary Eric van der Burg (asylum and migration) to reopen the former asylum seekers center on Crailo. The petition comes from the Stichting Natuur en Landschap het Gooi (SNLG), which previously also sent a letter to the State Secretary. The reception needs in the Netherlands are high and the Gooi municipalities can accommodate hundreds of refugees on the former defense site, according to the foundation.
As far as the foundation is concerned, the asylum seekers center on the site on the border of Bussum, Hilversum and Laren will be rebuilt and then the gates will be reopened to receive refugees.
A week ago, the foundation already tried to convince the state secretary with a letter, so now it’s flopping a petition across. The petition can be signed since yesterday, which more than 80 people have done so far. The aim is to collect as many signatures as possible in order to convince the Secretary of State even more.
Up to a thousand refugees
The foundation points out that the asylum seekers center – which now closed its doors for good six years ago – has always functioned well until its closure.
The Gooise foundation is putting so much pressure because the asylum crisis is huge. People have been forced to sleep outside at the registration center in Ter Apel in Groningen because it is too full. Little by little, other locations are now being added in the Netherlands. Crailo should be one of them, because there is room for many refugees there, the foundation believes. At its peak, about a thousand refugees lived on the site.
According to the foundation, the Gooi municipalities would be able to make a good contribution to the reception of refugees with the reopening of Crailo. And for ‘t Gooi this means a lot of money. According to the foundation, the Gooi municipalities have so far been ‘seriously in default’ when it comes to the reception of refugees.
hellish job
The Gooi en Vechtstreek Security Region has previously announced that meeting the reception of 2,000 Ukrainians and 225 other refugees will be a hell of a job.
It is questionable whether the Gooi municipalities will achieve these numbers and then there is a risk that, in view of the refugee flow, an even greater appeal will be made to the municipalities.
Whether refugees can actually be accommodated at Crailo is open to question. There is a construction plan. The most sustainable neighborhood in the country is to be built on Crailo, with nearly 600 homes, about five hectares of business park, and then part of it will be returned to nature. That plan has been going on for a while.
It is therefore questionable to what extent the complex can still be converted into an asylum seekers’ center. The director of project developer GEM Crailo BV did not want to comment on the letter from the foundation last week. So what might be possible remains unclear for the time being.
Just for shelter?
Incidentally, there is also criticism of the Foundation for Nature and Landscape Het Gooi. Many people wonder whether the foundation only aims to receive refugees on Crailo or whether there is more to it. The foundation fights for conservation on Crailo. If, due to the arrival of the asylum seekers’ centre, the construction plans or Crailo are delayed or even do not go ahead at all, that would not be a bad thing for the foundation.
The foundation already approached the Council of State at the end of 2021 to prevent plans on Crailo, because this has ‘irreversible consequences for nature and protected animal species’.
The petition does indeed focus on nature, according to the arguments to support the petition. Crailo is a haven for the roe deer, red squirrel, badger, fox and pine marten. But various bird species also flee the crowds there and find shelter and overnight accommodation on Crailo.