The Asylum Seekers Distribution Act must be introduced quickly and must therefore be dealt with by the House of Representatives, even if the cabinet is outgoing.
The Central Agency for the Reception of Asylum Seekers (COA) advocates this in a letter to State Secretary Eric van der Burg (Asylum Affairs). With this law, the ‘major shortage’ of reception places can be solved structurally, the COA writes.
The reception system can also be made more stable in this way, writes Joeri Kapteijns, deputy chairman of the COA to the State Secretary. Kapteijns hopes that the House of Representatives will ‘conclude that the Netherlands cannot afford to stand still on this file and will decide not to declare the distribution law controversial’.
The House of Representatives will decide at the beginning of September whether the law will be discussed or whether this will only happen when there is a new cabinet. The cabinet has fallen over the approach to asylum.
Proportional
The COA is very concerned about an imminent postponement of the law, which is intended to distribute asylum seekers fairly and evenly across all municipalities. The COA saw that various municipalities ‘already started acting in the spirit of the bill and took a step forward’, but now sees municipalities hesitating, ‘while reception places are so badly needed’.
Van der Burg is also concerned about municipalities putting their plans on hold, the State Secretary said last week.
System
As far as COA is concerned, the importance of a structural solution to reduce the pressure on asylum reception and to bring more stability to the reception system cannot be ‘repeated often enough’. The distribution law is an ‘important building block to achieve this’, writes the COA.
“Although the situation in Ter Apel seems less serious than in the summer of 2022, that was a low point that should never occur again. Asylum reception as a whole, however, is still anything but stable.”
Outside
Last summer, hundreds of asylum seekers were forced to spend the night outside the application center in Ter Apel. That hasn’t happened this summer.
The number of reception places remains tight and is ‘most urgent’ for unaccompanied minors (amv’s). Emergency shelter from the COA is still needed, as well as temporary shelter offered by municipalities, the COA writes. Moreover, the quality of (emergency) reception is not up to par everywhere, it notes.