The Netherlands Council for Refugees will go to court if the government does not allow the reception of asylum seekers to meet the legal minimum standards before 1 August. The foundation announces that it will formally hold the State and the Central Agency for the Reception of Asylum Seekers (COA) liable “for the harmful and inhumane conditions in the asylum reception”.
There is a structural shortage of reception places for asylum seekers in the Netherlands, as a result of which thousands of asylum seekers have been staying in (crisis) emergency reception locations for months, according to the Council for Refugees. “The conditions there are below the humanitarian lower limit and are harmful. In the meantime, the question is every day whether there are enough shelters where refugees can spend the night.”
Frank Candel, chairman of the Dutch Council for Refugees, also says that the reception is not temporarily below par, but that it has become structural. “We’re not going to accept this as the new normal.”
According to the Council for Refugees, a court ruling can help to break the administrative impasse. “There is no lack of solutions for the shortage of reception places. But due to an impasse between the central government and municipalities, decisiveness is lacking. The current reception crisis is therefore primarily an administrative crisis.”
Candel further reports that important warnings and advice have been ignored for years, and that the reception crisis is therefore legally culpable. “People fleeing war or persecution must be properly received. And the employees who work hard to make the best of it must be given the opportunity to do so.”