To comply with the dispersal law, municipalities must provide tens of thousands of additional asylum reception places next year. This is evident from an estimate that the new Minister of Asylum and Migration Bart van den Brink (CDA) made on Friday. sent to the House of Representatives.
By mid-2027, the Netherlands is expected to need 88,000 places for asylum seekers. On the reference date, at the beginning of this month, the number stood at 77,000 places, but of those, more than 27,000 are not perennial. Nearly 38,000 places must therefore be created over the next year and a half.
The dispersal law was created to distribute asylum seekers evenly across the Netherlands. In recent years, the shortage of shelter places was sometimes so great that people slept in the grass at the registration center in Ter Apel. In extreme cases, the minister can now force municipalities if they fail to fulfill their reception obligation.
Although progress has been visible since the introduction of the law in 2024, only four in ten municipalities still comply with the dispersal law, concluded NRC in January based on figures from the Central Agency for the Reception of Asylum Seekers (COA).
The minister’s capacity estimate shows where the gaps are. The province of South Holland turns dark red on the map, with a shortage of more than 11,000 shelter places. North Holland (7,700), North Brabant (7,200) and Gelderland (4,900) are also high on the list of provinces that still need to add places.
The northern provinces, as was the case before the introduction of the law, receive proportionately the most asylum seekers. Groningen and Flevoland have even arranged more places than the minister asks of them.
Election theme
It is now up to the provincial governments – which are primarily responsible for shelter – to discuss with the municipalities exactly where the additional shelter places should be located. The minister has made an ‘indicative distribution’ based on, among other things, the number of inhabitants, but this can be deviated from.
In the campaign for next month’s municipal elections, asylum reception is an election theme in many places. It is therefore likely that decision-making in many municipalities will be moved beyond the elections, leaving the decision to a new council and a new council.
Ultimately, the minister will determine the final distribution, probably at the end of this year. The municipalities will have to commit to this.
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