News item | 26-08-2022 | 18:34
The situation in the overcrowded application center in Ter Apel is untenable. The influx of asylum seekers cannot be accommodated at the moment and there are insufficient (crisis emergency) shelters to accommodate people. Acute measures are necessary to achieve immediate relief. Administrative agreements have been made about this, which will be reported separately. But on top of that, the cabinet has decided to take far-reaching measures to stem the influx of refugees and to promote the outflow.
For the very short term, people who stay in front of the gate will be given clarity at the registration center in Ter Apel about their identification and registration appointment with the police and when they can report for this in Ter Apel.
The Ministry of Defense is making a location available where asylum seekers can be accommodated who now have to spend the night around the application center in Ter Apel. Defense will also help build the location and transport asylum seekers to and from Ter Apel. people are then offered shelter in an emergency shelter in a nearby municipality.
Until now, people who were granted asylum status in the Netherlands were always allowed to bring their families over immediately. In most cases, traveling to the Netherlands now means that those families end up in Ter Apel, and only after much too long in other full asylum seekers’ centers. That won’t work anymore. It has therefore been decided that families of status holders may only come to the Netherlands when a suitable home is ready for them.
Secondly, the Netherlands will no longer admit people under the EU-Turkey Statement until the end of 2023. Under these agreements, the Netherlands has admitted a relatively large number of Syrians since 2016. Only Germany recorded more. The cabinet continues to consider these agreements important and will also start implementing them again from 2024. But in the current situation that is irresponsible.
Finally, agreements have been made with the municipalities to restart the flow of asylum seekers. Up to and including 2024, 37,500 flex homes will be added. Central government and all local authorities give extra priority to making the locations available and preparing them for construction. This should lead to a flexible shell of temporary housing for people who are looking for a home urgently and who have been on a waiting list for a long time, and for people who have been given the right to stay in the Netherlands and have fled war and violence.
There are significant downsides to the measures, which is why they are also temporary in nature. As soon as it is possible, the measures will be abolished again. For now, however, they are inevitable, says State Secretary Van der Burg for Asylum and Migration: “It is terrible to see how many people have to sleep in the open air every night, because there are too few shelters available. That cannot go on any longer.”
Minister De Jonge for Housing and Spatial Planning: ‘This package of measures is far-reaching and substantial, but it is the only quick way to limit the influx and get the flow going. We do this for anyone who is urgently looking for a home; people who have been on the waiting list for some time and people who have been given the right to stay in the Netherlands.”