The asylum crisis will not be solved in the short term; from 1 January there will probably be a shortage of more than ten thousand reception places. This is apparent from a confidential transition plan of the Central Agency for the Reception of Asylum Seekers (COA) that RTL News and news agency ANP have seen, of which a well-entered source confirms the content to NRC. This means that crisis emergency care will continue to be necessary in 2023.
According to RTL News If nothing changes, the asylum reception will head for less than 46,000 places, while the COA needs more than 56,000 on 1 January. This is partly because many of the temporary emergency shelter locations will no longer be used from 1 January.
Homes for status holders
The shortage of reception places partly depends on the throughput of status holders who are allocated a home. In the asylum deal between the cabinet and municipalities, it was agreed that municipalities must do everything to provide twenty thousand status holders still residing in asylum centers with a home before the end of this year, but according to the COA this number is “far away”, writes. RTL News.
The COA therefore expects that crisis emergency care will also be needed after 1 January. This probably means that municipalities will have to remain involved in the emergency reception of asylum seekers for longer than agreed in the asylum deal. “As long as the national reception capacity as a whole is not yet sufficient, there can be no question of phasing out (crisis) emergency reception locations,” the COA concludes. RTL News in its transition plan.
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Asylum deal agreements not met
Asylum reception has been extremely difficult for a long time. Hundreds of asylum seekers slept outside for weeks at night at the application center in Ter Apel in Groningen this summer. To remedy that crisis, the government and municipalities concluded a deal on temporary emergency shelter. However, State Secretary Eric van der Burg (Asylum and Migration, VVD) wrote to the House of Representatives on Friday that municipalities do not provide the agreed number of emergency places and that there are still more asylum seekers in the application center in Ter Apel than agreed.
The State Secretary is working – in spite of the wishes of his own party – on a ‘distribution law’, which should force municipalities to accept asylum seekers. In order to accommodate the VVD, a compromise is currently being worked on in which municipalities receive a bonus of several thousand euros for each asylum seeker they voluntarily accept.