Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte will resign from his cabinet after no agreement was reached on measures to limit immigration, the Dutch news agency ANP reported, as quoted by Reuters.
According to ANP sources, Rutte’s fourth coalition government has collapsed after failing to reach an agreement on how to limit the number of asylum seekers in the Netherlands after three days of tense negotiations. Two of the political forces in the cabinet have not supported Rutte’s conservative party’s proposals to tackle immigration.
The Dutch prime minister’s office did not respond to Reuters’ request for comment this evening.
Tensions came to a head this week after Rutte sought support for his proposal to limit the entry of children of war refugees already in the Netherlands. The Dutch prime minister also proposed measures that would force separated families to wait at least two years before they could be reunited.
Last year, the number of asylum applications in the Netherlands jumped by a third to more than 46,000, and the government predicts that this year there could be more than 70,000. This will again put a strain on the places of accommodation for refugees in the Netherlands, notes Reuters.
Last year, hundreds of refugees were forced to sleep in the open, with no or limited access to drinking water, sanitation or health care.
After the humanitarian organization Doctors Without Borders sent a team to help with the medical needs of the immigrants for the first time in the country’s history, Rutte said he felt “embarrassed”. He promised to improve conditions in the sites, mainly by reducing the number of refugees arriving in the Netherlands.
But he failed to win the support of coalition partners who felt his policies were going too far.
2023-07-07 19:59:28
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