The ChristenUnie will meet on Saturday to discuss the asylum policy of the cabinet, including the asylum deal concluded at the end of August. Parts of this are sensitive in the group, but the brakes on family reunification are particularly bad for some of the supporters.
The day after the asylum deal was approved in the Council of Ministers, about a hundred CU members expressed their dissatisfaction with the deal in a strong letter to the House of Representatives and the party board. Before it was on the table in the Council of Ministers, the group leaders of coalition parties VVD, D66, CDA and CU had already reached an agreement. The letter writers find it “painful and unacceptable” that the ChristenUnie was involved in closing the deal and want it to be reversed.
The angry members find the brake on family reunification of status holders unpalatable. “As a party of the family, we should never accept that a fundamental right such as family reunification is being deprived of refugees.”
The group also finds the brake on family reunification “painful”, MP Don Ceder wrote earlier on a blog. The parliamentary group does support other measures from the deal, such as the plans to put an end to the dire situation at the application center in Ter Apel. “I hope that we will soon no longer see this embarrassing situation for the Netherlands and never see it again,” Ceder wrote in the blog.
Party leader Gert-Jan Segers gave back after criticism of the asylum deal. The ChristenUnie is a party that takes responsibility, he says. This sometimes involves “extensively fought” compromises, “to bring ideals a little closer”.
There is also division within the VVD about the asylum deal. Many liberals think the agreements do not go far enough and want an asylum stop. At a VVD meeting at the end of August, with VVD State Secretary Eric van der Burg and party chairman Ruben Brekelmans, emotions regularly ran high.
The government’s asylum deal must end the asylum crisis. Asylum seekers had to sleep outside on the grass at Ter Apel for weeks, and Doctors without Borders offered the asylum seekers medical assistance outside the gate of the application center for the first time ever in the Netherlands.