Mayor Jaap Velema of Westerwolde is hopeful that the nuisance will decrease in Ter Apel soon after the New Year, but also fears for 2024.
Velema is afraid that the pressure on the asylum center in the border village will remain high next year. “Also because the political parties in The Hague are currently mainly concerned with cabinet formation,” he says. “Ter Apel is subordinated to that. I recently noticed this again when I visited the Binnenhof.”
Some quiet days
Christmas passed quietly. The crowds in the asylum center in Ter Apel remained within limits because emergency locations have been set up elsewhere in the region and in the country. “It’s nice to have a few quiet days,” says Velema. “For me, but also for residents and shopkeepers of Ter Apel, employees of the COA and the willing asylum seekers. A peace that, I fear, will not last very long.”
Peace was also almost constantly hard to find in 2023. This was mainly due to the nuisance caused by underprivileged asylum seekers. They committed thefts and burglaries in Ter Apel, but also visited surrounding villages such as Nieuw-Weerdinge and Ter Apelkanaal and the German border town of Rütenbrock.
Stricter regime
Velema and his colleague Eric van Oosterhout van Emmen raised the alarm in The Hague. As a result, it was decided to set up a separate department in the asylum center, a so-called process availability location (PBL). A department where underprivileged asylum seekers stay under a stricter regime. This gives them less opportunity to leave the reception location and their procedure is completed more quickly, so that they have to leave Ter Apel quickly.
“That approach works, as experience shows,” says Velema. “But there are still far too few underprivileged people in the PBL. The department is still not fully set up. But the intention is that 100 underprivileged people will be able to get a place by the end of January. If that happens, the nuisance should decrease. It’s a bright spot, but I have to see it first.”
Not everyone has a bed
While the nuisance was a common thread throughout the year, the last few weeks of the year were mainly due to the large crowds in the asylum center. A high influx of refugees and a small number of places in other asylum centers meant that the reception location in Ter Apel, the place where asylum seekers recently arrived in the Netherlands, became too full again and not everyone had a bed. Asylum seekers had to sleep on chairs or sometimes on the floor. Municipalities in the region and some elsewhere in the country are setting up temporary emergency locations.
“That made it quiet for a while at Christmas,” says the mayor of Westerwolde. “But those locations will close soon and then things will go wrong again in Ter Apel, you can already predict that. To prevent things from going wrong again, status holders who are currently occupying places in asylum seekers’ centers must be provided with housing. And there must be more structural shelters. But too few municipalities are prepared to commit to this. That is why The Hague must enforce this willingness. Not in the long term, but very soon.”
Three years of misery behind us
And he has major doubts about the latter. “After the recent House of Representatives elections, I quickly had the idea that Ter Apel was subordinate to the formation. I also noticed this when I attended the formation discussions and spoke with politicians. They talk about a limited asylum influx and other measures, but these are long-term measures. Ter Apel can’t wait for that. We have now had three years of misery there, with nuisance and summers with asylum seekers sleeping outside. Inhumane conditions that need to be addressed in the short term. The Hague must quickly enforce that asylum seekers are better distributed and that more status holders are housed. The distribution law, yes, it can make that possible. But we have to wait and see whether it passes the Senate.”
To enforce something itself, Westerwolde took COA to court. “The COA does not adhere to agreements regarding the maximum number of two thousand asylum seekers in Ter Apel and, among other things, houses too many underage young people there. We hope to enforce this change through summary proceedings. That we will also have more tools to improve the situation in Ter Apel.”
‘I am not despondent’
He says he does not become despondent from constantly ‘knocking’ in The Hague, in consultation with the municipal council members. “I’m doing my best and hope that things will work out as soon as possible, because Ter Apel can’t wait. I am not despondent, but it is crazy that we are still not doing well in this country when it comes to asylum reception.”