State Secretary Van der Burg wants to present a bill to the House of Representatives at the end of next week to improve the distribution of asylum seekers in the Netherlands. The fall break begins next Friday.

In a parliamentary debate, Van der Burg admitted he could not have the bill ready by October 1, but he still wants the law to come into force on January 1. That will be soon, because both houses have yet to agree. The Secretary of State said the law had not yet been passed by the Council of Ministers and that he was “perfecting” the law to get enough support in the House.

resistance in the VVD

Recently, it has become clear that the delay is mainly due to resistance in Van der Burg’s own party, the VVD. The focus of the discussion is the question of whether municipalities can be forced to accept asylum seekers. Opposition parties asked Van der Burg if he thought the law should contain anything about coercion.

The Secretary of State didn’t want to use that word, but he said there has to be a law that works. Van der Burg wants to eliminate the situation where emergency care always has to be organized at the last minute. He also dislikes the fact that there are municipalities that say: “Do that for the neighbors.”

Van der Burg emphasized that the law must ensure that more municipalities have capacity for receiving asylum seekers. “Otherwise the law makes no sense.” This does not necessarily mean that every municipality will have an asylum seeker center, “but there must be sufficient capacity for which every municipality in the Netherlands feels responsible in one way or another”.

VVD: It’s about the way

In the parliamentary debate, VVD spokesman Brekelmans was asked by many to clarify the position of his group. He replied that he would judge the law when it came before the House. He added that the VVD also wanted better coverage in the Netherlands, but the issue was how this would be done.

Brekelmans referred to the example of Tubbergen, where the cabinet obliged a community to take in asylum seekers, which met with a lot of resistance: “We saw what that does on the ground, how much resistance it provokes. We need to look for a way to achieve it that leads to wider dissemination, but at the same time maintains support for asylum in the Netherlands.”