Suddenly he was on the national map last month, Mayor Han van Midden (VVD). As ‘refused mayor’ of the municipality of Roosendaal. At the top is a list by the Central Agency for the Reception of Asylum Seekers (COA) of municipalities that refuse asylum seekers, together with municipalities such as Delft and Westland, where refugees have not been able to go for at least twelve years. Thus brought the NOS the news about that list. And that while the shelter in Ter Apel is overflowing and State Secretary Eric van der Burg (Asylum and Migration, VVD) is “talking the blisters” to let mayors show solidarity with municipalities that are struggling with overcrowded reception centers.
Van Midden was furious when he was put down like that. Not on the NOS, but at COA, which, according to him, is difficult to arrange matters with. Which he has been consulting with for months, but every time he gets zero complaints. Or is told that an offered location can only be taken into use in eight months.
COA does not consider social support to be relevant
Han van Midden mayor
Van Midden says aloud what he thinks many mayors think: “COA is only interested in ‘asylum factories’, centers for at least three hundred refugees. Public support does not consider it relevant.” That is why, according to Van Midden, COA has made itself so unpopular. “Because nobody wants a reception location as large as the one in Leeuwarden. That is bad for the city and for the asylum seekers themselves.” Large-scale reception stands in the way of integration and acceptance, says Van Midden. “Small-scale should be the direction, then there is also support from municipalities. But they don’t want that at COA.”
Van der Burg will present a package of measures to the House of Representatives this week, which are aimed at relieving the overcrowded reception centers. These interventions should put an end to the ‘Lampedusa’-like scenes in Ter Apel, where asylum seekers have to sleep on chairs or the floor, or are pumped head over heels to municipalities where last minute shelter is available. The only question is whether those measures will provide relief in the short term. Emergency legislation to force ‘refusing municipalities’ to accept asylum seekers is not expected in the short term. It is still being studied. It is therefore questionable whether Van der Burg will succeed in finding space for four national reception centers to relieve Ter Apel.
Also read: That asylum seekers slept outside in Ter Apel is a low point – but it should not surprise anyone
Van Midden also calls the images from Ter Apel degrading, but does not blame his municipality for it. “We immediately responded to those images last week. We have activated our crisis shelter. The first refugees from Ter Apel have now arrived. But we did organize that ourselves, outside the COA. The State Secretary is peddling with groups of asylum seekers from Ter Apel, but there was just room. In Eindhoven, for example, but COA didn’t want that.”
Roosendaal also encountered a reluctant COA with other locations, according to Van Middel. Last April, a large reception center wanted to set up next to a neighborhood that had made the news six months earlier with fireworks riots. “A neighborhood that we wanted to boost. And then COA comes up with the plan to add a few hundred asylum seekers. We have indeed said that we did not find it useful. But there was hardly any talk about alternatives, even though we did have them. Smaller scale and in a different neighbourhood. But the COA did not want that.”
The COA rejected an empty building for temporary shelter for 150 asylum seekers, offered by Roosendaal last month. “They found the ground interesting, because they could place container homes on it. But it will take six to eight months before the first refugee can move in.”
More direction
Roosendaal is not the only one who encounters a slow COA. Last year, for example, Leiden offered locations for 350 asylum seekers. “But it took a long time before COA took follow-up steps,” said a spokesperson. At the end of June, the first 100 refugees will be able to go there. The reception center will be fully operational by the end of this year. Eindhoven went for three hundred refugees, one hundred in the region and two hundred in the city itself.
According to mayor John Jorritsma, the location has been empty since the beginning of May. “But delays cannot be blamed on COA, you also have to make facilities, find people who come to work there. And there are none. You can hardly blame the COA for the shortage on the labor market.”
Jorritsma and Van Midden both believe that the State Secretary should take more control in order to resolve the asylum chaos. If necessary with emergency legislation, because according to Jorritsma there are now municipalities that “select at the front: Ukrainians, but no Syrians”. According to Van Midden, the State Secretary must come up with national distribution keys: fifty asylum seekers in the smaller municipalities and a hundred in the larger municipalities. “That’s what the State Secretary wants too, I heard him say that in the media. But he is still at the top of the COA with that elusive world.”
In a response, COA says it recognizes the logistical problems, including finding personnel. “Unfortunately, this leads to delays, where you would like to accelerate in the current situation,” said a spokesperson. According to him, COA “always enters into serious discussions about locations, regardless of size.”