The cabinet has asked the Groningen security region to deploy emergency emergency shelters for people who are in the overcrowded application center in Ter Apel. This means that people are accommodated for a week in, for example, sports halls. This temporarily relieves the application center. Mayor of Groningen Koen Schuiling has not yet responded to the request.
The application center in Ter Apel has room for two thousand asylum seekers, but this number has already been exceeded many times. Until this week, a solution was always found in the nick of time. For example, a few weeks ago in the evening, hundreds of people were transferred to Oss, among others.
But last night it hit a new low. The Central Agency for the Reception of Asylum Seekers (COA) was no longer able to transfer people to other locations in time. As a result, people had to sleep outside in the night from Tuesday to Wednesday. In the end, COA employees received the asylum seekers in waiting rooms halfway through the night, but there were no beds for them.
State Secretary Eric Van der Burg (Asylum) expects that the serious shortage of beds will not be solved this week. Since the COA can no longer fulfill its statutory duty to provide reception for everyone who applies for asylum in the Netherlands, the cabinet is appealing to the Groningen Security Region. It is then up to the municipalities in this region to say yes to the call and to create crisis emergency shelters.
It is expected that about two hundred asylum seekers a day will come to Ter Apel in the coming period, says COA director Milo Schoenmaker. He called it “extremely disappointing” that it is not possible to provide everyone with proper shelter, despite repeated appeals to all municipalities in the Netherlands.
Crisis emergency shelter also deployed in 2015, but nobody actually wanted this again
In 2015 and 2016, emergency emergency shelter was also used by the cabinet as an emergency measure. In that year, an average of about four thousand refugees, mainly from Syria, came to the Netherlands every week. Sports halls were transformed into reception locations throughout the country.
At the time, there was a lot of criticism about the way in which the refugees were received. In sports halls, for example, people have hardly any privacy and they live close together. Because the living conditions are not pleasant at the crisis locations, people are only allowed to stay there for a week. As a result, the refugees were moved from one place to another in 2015 and 2016.
The cabinet preferred not to use crisis emergency shelter again, but unfortunately there is no other solution available this week. The COA is expected to be able to make use of other locations in the short term, so that crisis emergency shelter may only be needed for this week. Contrary to seven years ago, therefore, only the surrounding region has been called upon for the time being.
COA points to thousands of empty beds intended for Ukrainians
While more than fifty people had to spend the night on chairs in the waiting area at the registration center in Ter Apel, thousands of beds intended for the reception of Ukrainians were left unsatisfied. “Then help us with that,” said Schoenmaker. According to the boss of the COA, this can be used “as early as tomorrow morning”, so that the reception would immediately be up to standard again.
Ukrainians do not have to apply for asylum in the Netherlands. It is not the COA but the Security Regions that are responsible for their reception. Tens of thousands of beds have already been created for the refugees, thousands of which are empty. This is at odds with the difficulties COA faces.
The shortage of places for regular asylum seekers is “not due to all municipalities”, notes the COA director. “But there are municipalities that do not feel addressed.” Schoenmaker thinks the time has come to force municipalities to receive asylum seekers. For this, a law must first be made that the House of Representatives and the Senate must agree to. Van der Burg hopes to achieve this before the summer.
The state secretary is not happy with the situation, he said. “That’s not how we should do it in the Netherlands.” He says from this Wednesday that he will meet every day with the services responsible for the asylum reception to see where sleeping places can be found for the coming night.
Ultimately, Van der Burg wants to move to a second and possibly a third application center in the Netherlands, so that everyone who wants to apply for asylum no longer has to go to Ter Apel first.