The temporary law whereby the Immigration and Naturalization Service does not have to pay a penalty if it takes too long to assess an asylum application, is not sufficient. Which the administrative court has determined.
According to the judge, by removing the penalty there is no “big stick” to force the IND to make a quick decision. That stick does not necessarily have to be a penalty, says the judge, but the law also does not provide an alternative.
The IND has been experiencing problems for years, due to a combination of too few staff and too many asylum applications. As a result, there was a significant backlog in the assessment of asylum applications. This resulted in an annual tens of millions had to be spent on penalties. Every week, an extra million euros was added in penalty obligations.
Catching up
In 2020, the ‘Temporary Act Suspension of Penalties IND’ was therefore adopted. As a result, the costs for periodic penalty payments had to fall, while the cabinet and the IND were given time to put things in order. According to the then State Secretary for Asylum Broekers-Knol, the backlog of about 15,000 cases was in mid-July 2021. almost completely broken in.
In principle, the law would apply for a year, but is still in effect† The previous cabinet came up with the plan to permanently cancel the penalty payments. To do this, the Aliens Act must be amended. However, the Council of State was very critical about the intention to permanently abolish the penalty.
‘Administrative penalty payment’ has rightly been deleted
In principle, the IND must make a decision on an asylum application within six months. An asylum seeker must then point this out to the IND if this does not happen. If the IND still does not take a decision within two weeks, the IND had to pay a penalty: the so-called administrative penalty.
An asylum seeker can then go to court. If the judge finds that the asylum seeker’s appeal is justified, he can order the IND to make a decision within a certain period. A periodic penalty payment can be attached to this, in order to force the IND to do so.
The administrative court has now decided that the administrative penalty payment has rightly been deleted in the temporary law, but that the penalty that a court can impose should not have been deleted. “As a result, the old situation is revived and the court can attach a penalty payment to the decision if it is not decided in time on the asylum application.”
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