Prime Minister Mark Rutte has been summoned to come to the VVD parliamentary group meeting tomorrow to explain the asylum crisis. The liberals see nothing in the law that can force the municipality to receive asylum seekers, which should have been completed today. It is very unusual for the Prime Minister to be called to his party’s faction meeting.
The law has been negotiated for months. It couldn’t go wrong this weekend, as other coalition parties could hear. But the party of the VVD still met on Sunday and states that it cannot accept the law that is now before it. The MPs want to hear from Rutte what the cabinet will do to limit the influx of asylum seekers. Without guarantees about this, say those involved, they cannot agree to the law. The group was supposed to continue talking today, but because Rutte is now at the climate summit in Egypt, that has been postponed to tomorrow.
It is yet another line through the bill of State Secretary Eric van der Burg (Asylum, VVD), who already missed two previous deadlines to complete the law. This time the mayors, united in the Security Council, had mentioned today as a hard deadline. The fact that Van der Burg’s own party is obstructive is extra painful. Asylum is a very sensitive subject within the VVD’s rank and file. Motions have already been announced for the upcoming party congress on November 19 that calls on the faction not to agree to the law.
That sensitivity has only increased after new forecasts were released last week about the number of people applying for asylum in our country. The figures for this year are already rising enormously to about 48,000, next year the influx – with the same policy – would rise to slightly above 50,000. The VVD in particular would have been very shocked by this.
Forecasts
The latest forecasts are also a reason to discuss migration within the cabinet. A club of ministers from all four coalition parties has already met twice for informal consultations about which influx to the Netherlands can handle. The government may wish to work with a ‘policy guideline’.
A source from The Hague stated this weekend that ‘there will be real movement’ on the migration file in the coming weeks, as the coalition had already agreed upon when it took office. “Why does the Netherlands approve 30 or 40 percent more asylum applications than Germany in comparable cases?”
The lack of a law is annoyed by the left-wing opposition in the House of Representatives. SP, PvdA and GroenLinks want clarification from Van der Burg about the asylum law before 2 pm today. Later this afternoon and tonight, there will be a debate in the House on asylum.
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