Prime Minister Mark Rutte tempers expectations about reducing the asylum influx to Europe. “There is not one golden measure to limit migration,” he said today after the Council of Ministers.
At the beginning of February there will be a European summit where migration is on the agenda. According to Rutte, the summit should ultimately lead to measures in ‘March, April’. According to him, the need is clear: “We now have a very high influx, looking at the average.”
Rutte wants to return to ‘normal’ numbers, which ‘we can handle’. This year, the Central Agency for the Reception of Asylum Seekers (COA) expects that 75,500 places will be needed, because more asylum seekers will come to the Netherlands again from the spring. If nothing changes, our country will be short of 38,000 reception places for asylum seekers.
Experiment
Through RTL News leaked this week that the Netherlands is investing more money for border controls and more often returning rejected asylum seekers. The EU should also conduct an experiment by handling asylum procedures at the European external border. In this way, refugees and disadvantaged migrants can be separated more quickly.
These measures are by no means new: many are already policies that do not work or have not yet been implemented in practice. “But I notice that it is now really at the top of the agenda in Europe,” said Rutte.
Limiting the influx is also important for Rutte as VVD leader. He promised his supporters ‘personally’ that he would work on the influx. Incidentally, the cabinet has not determined, Rutte said, whether the influx of asylum seekers is ‘too high or too low’. “But we do have an agreement that sufficient shelter must be able to be achieved.”
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