The VVD has decided not to take it too seriously yet. His own secretary of state Eric van der Burg, responsible for asylum policy, says that for the moment he is ‘studying’ the verdict. Member of Parliament Ruben Brekelmans is still confident that things will go better than expected: ‘The judge ruled in the case of a specific family. The family reunification provision will generally remain in effect for the time being.
They are responding to the verdict that will have overshadowed many VVD executives’ evening package on Monday: Preliminary relief judge in Haarlem declared the travel restriction on family members of admitted asylum seekers illegal. A Syrian woman who was granted an asylum permit in the Netherlands was right and allowed her family members to come to the Netherlands immediately. They don’t have to wait six months before.
That waiting time was part of it the political compromise reached at the end of August by VVD, CDA, D66 and ChristenUnie after a summer in which the Dutch asylum policy got completely screwed up. In Ter Apel people structurally slept in the open, deprived of the most basic structures, to the point that the Inspectorate for Health and Youth Assistance eventually intervened defining the situation as intolerable.
After days of feverish consultation within the coalition, it led to the promise of 20,000 short-term homes for status holders. €740 million was also set aside to develop the ‘small-scale and flexible reception’ network promised years ago across the country, so that the asylum system would be better prepared for future influx peaks and not always bring to acute administrative panic.
Political agreement
But Prime Minister Rutte’s VVD, fearing the ‘pull’ effect of such a reception system, asked in exchange for a measure that would significantly and rapidly reduce the arrival of new asylum seekers and lighten the pressure for a while: the period within which a decision was extended the possibility of family reunification. This also applied to the period within which the visa is actually granted to family members who are authorized to come. The most important condition for obtaining family reunification: the asylum seeker must first have found accommodation here.
In their explanation, the coalition parties immediately disagreed on the precise effect of these measures, but the experts analyzed that it was a decision after nine months and a granting of the visa after six months. In practice, this means months of delay.
The same experts immediately added that it was probably not legally possible. And not only outside experts thought so, but also the European Union and Van der Burg’s own officials. ‘It is possible for a judge to disagree with this reasoning,’ they wrote in a council discussed in the Council of Ministers in August. ‘The legal sustainability of this measure is uncertain.’
Officials also stressed the risk of “substantial fines” the judge could impose on the IND Immigration Service if he rules that legal decision deadlines are exceeded by the new policy.
The cabinet ignored the opposition’s call to seek advice first from the Council of State, the government’s top legal adviser. The coalition parties decided to take a chance, hoping they could move forward again, not knowing that things would go badly before the end of the year. to court at the earliest opportunity.
No excuses
The Haarlem court ruling concerns a woman and a family in a specific situation: the family members, originally from Syria, are currently in Sudan on a temporary visa which expires this week. Hence the urgency of the sentence. And that’s why the ruling itself doesn’t wipe the entire travel restriction off the table in one go.
But in a general sense, the verdict is clear: a country cannot take international law on family reunification ‘even temporarily’ off the table. Not even, as the cabinet proved in court, if a country claims there is little reception capacity for new arrivals. “Not even if that group of migrants ended up in a state of extreme material deprivation.”
In short, the lack of beds, toilets and food in Ter Apel is not a legally valid excuse to limit the asylum policy. The path is clear for any family member to dispute the delay.
The left-wing opposition parties immediately proved right on Monday evening and on Tuesday they will ask Van der Burg for clarifications: what now? Will the effort to find extra reception capacity hold up now that the VVD part of the agreement is being blown away and the fragile political balance in the coalition is being abruptly disrupted again?
Government parties remained in private for several weeks seeking a more fundamental approach to asylum policy. They thought they still had time for that.
