shortage of almost 40,000 places

• Sonja Pleumeekers

  news editor

• Jeroen Stans

  political reporter

Many more places for asylum reception should be added this year than previously thought. At the moment there are just under 50,000 reception places. But due to expiring contracts, many of them will expire within a few months, according to calculations by News hour.

The Central Agency for the Reception of Asylum Seekers (COA) states in recently published publications that 75,500 places will be needed next year, because more asylum seekers are expected to come to the Netherlands again from the spring. This combination of factors – more asylum seekers and expiring contracts – means that if nothing changes, the Netherlands will be short of 38,000 reception places for asylum seekers.

From numbers that News hour looked at, it turns out that it concerns about 35 locations throughout the country that will close their doors between now and June 1. In the coming period it will be “all hands on deck to prevent people from ending up on the street”, says Sander Schaap of the Netherlands Refugee Work.

Reason for concern, says the Council for Refugees. “I really think it’s up to everyone to avoid what we saw at Ter Apel last year,” says Schaap. If you look at the numbers now, you can see that it will be really exciting in the coming weeks and months. But letting people sleep outside, especially with these temperatures, is just not an option.”

In order to mitigate the problems at Ter Apel in the autumn of 2022, all kinds of emergency reception locations were set up under high pressure. One of these is a huge location on the Walibi event site near Biddinghuizen, in the municipality of Dronten. Tent pavilions have been set up on the grass, where a total of 1500 asylum seekers can go.

“There are now people from Syria and Afghanistan, the countries where many refugees come from,” says Mayor Jean Paul Gebben. “Emergency locations like this are the reason that Ter Apel no longer has the problems it had in the past.”

But now that the event season has started, those pavilions have to be closed. The last asylum seeker must leave the site on March 15. Every year, the site is the setting for well-known festivals such as Defqon and Lowlands.

No thought has been given to a replacement location within the municipality, says the mayor. “We already have an asylum seekers center here where we receive 300 extra people. We have indicated what we can do, we will not solve the country’s problems.”

So many new places, while it has recently become extra clear how difficult it can be to find those places. Perhaps the new distribution law will help, but for now State Secretary Eric van der Burg has to do without it. The law is still before the Council of State for advice before it goes to the House of Representatives.

But even before the law enters into force, municipalities and provinces can get started, says Schaap. “It is already clear what is expected of the provinces. Get started now. Make plans for the longer term and especially for the short term: crisis emergency shelter, locations, emergency shelter.”

The mayor of Dronten also advocates putting their shoulders to the wheel. “Look at what is possible. If you are creative then a lot is possible. But you have to dare.”