The Hague Chooses Political Games Over the National Interest - What the Collapse of the Emergency Asylum Measures Act Really Means

For much of the past week, the news was dominated by one story: the Emergency Asylum Measures Act failing in the Senate. What should have been an initial step in the right direction toward a stricter and more realistic migration policy ended instead in mudslinging between politicians on the left and right. Once again, it became painfully clear that The Hague, like so many political elites across Europe, is primarily preoccupied with itself and only marginally concerned with the real problems and wishes of the public. As a result, the Netherlands remains stuck in a fundamental crisis of governance that appears almost impossible to resolve without major cultural change in both The Hague and Dutch society at large.

What is the Emergency Asylum Measures Act?

The Emergency Asylum Measures Act is a package of eight measures introduced by the previous government to curb asylum inflows. In concrete terms, the law sought to relieve pressure on the asylum system and reduce the number of incoming asylum seekers. Its main provisions included shortening the duration of temporary asylum residence permits from five years to three, abolishing permanent asylum permits, broadening the scope for declaring individuals undesirable, removing the IND’s intention procedure, restricting family reunification for unmarried partners and adult children, introducing stricter reviews for repeat applications, and partially criminalising illegal residence. Ultimately, the bill was voted down in the Senate.

Binnenhof The Hague

What was adopted, however, was the Act Introducing the Two-Status System. This law distinguishes between refugees entitled to full protection, for example because of persecution, and those granted a more limited status, for instance in situations of generalised violence, for whom family reunification becomes more difficult.

What happened?

To understand what happened, one must go back to July of last year. During the vote on the Emergency Asylum Measures Act in the House of Representatives, members of GroenLinks–PvdA were absent because they had attended a Keti Koti event.

That major blunder led to the narrow passage of a PVV motion, tabled at the time by former minister Marjolein Faber (PVV), including the criminalisation of illegal residence-something that, in the view of its supporters, is entirely self-evident and already implied by the term itself. Yet for Christian parties such as the SGP, as well as many centre-left parties such as CDA and D66, there was one major objection: the fact that assisting illegal asylum seekers could, at least in theory, also become a criminal offence. Although no one seriously believed that a person handing out “a bowl of soup” to an illegal asylum seeker would actually be prosecuted, that nonetheless became the dominant narrative in the public debate.

In the end, less than four months ago, an amendment was adopted to remove that final element from the bill. This past Tuesday, the Senate was due to vote on the law, together with an accompanying amendment bill that would have limited the criminalisation of illegal residence. Minister Van den Brink (CDA) had added this amendment in order to accommodate his party.

But what happened next? The PVV decided in the Senate to vote against the amendment bill that it had itself supported in the House of Representatives only a few months earlier, fully aware that if the amendment failed in the Senate, parties such as CDA and SGP would vote against the Emergency Asylum Measures Act as a whole. That is, unfortunately, exactly what happened.

And if one thinks that was the end of it, one should not forget that coalition party D66 also voted against the law in the Senate, despite Rob Jetten having posed with the Dutch flag during the election campaign and spoken of the need for “control over migration.” This had already been glossed over in the coalition agreement with the absurd line of reasoning that the coalition would implement the law if it were passed. For a party that so often lectures others about the rule of law, should that not be the norm in any case? The only way D66 could still talk its way out of this was by invoking the forthcoming European Migration Pact, which, according to the party, would somehow solve the migration problem—even though D66 had also voted against it at the European level. Yet migration experts such as Steije Hofhuis have already argued that the EU Migration Pact will achieve very little, because it barely addresses the central incentive driving migration: once you arrive in Europe, it is extremely difficult to be sent back. As a result, illegal asylum migration will simply continue, now supplemented by what amounts to a “European dispersal law.”

And if we are going to talk about hypocrisy, we should also mention the VVD. Dilan Yeşilgöz shed crocodile tears when she called the outcome—namely the collapse of the Emergency Asylum Measures Act—“deeply disappointing.” According to D66 senator Boris Dittrich, however, this reaction rang hollow, because Yeşilgöz had allegedly known for months that D66 intended to vote against the law.

What does this say about the state of the Netherlands?

In the end, the conclusion is simple: the Netherlands remains on the same course, while countries such as Belgium, Germany, Sweden and Denmark have long since understood that mass migration is unsustainable for both left-wing and right-wing voters alike.

In the Netherlands, however, politics remains stubbornly resistant to that reality. Immediate party interests, as on so many other issues, take precedence over the national interest. Sadly, this now seems to reflect the broader culture of the country as well. As the Netherlands continues to fall behind the rest of Europe in terms of prosperity, social cohesion and future prospects, Dutch society is becoming ever more atomised. The phrase “things are going well for me, but badly for us” therefore applies not only to politicians in The Hague, but also, unfortunately, to the wider social and civic sphere.

The real urgency still does not appear to have registered in The Hague: it is five to twelve—or, according to some, already five past. Like Belgium and many other European countries, the Netherlands faces an enormous number of serious challenges. Migration is not the only one, of course, but it is one with major long-term consequences, and those who see their neighbourhoods changing have every reason to be concerned.

It is therefore up to Dutch citizens and local communities to become more active and to stop believing that voting once every few years is the same thing as bringing about real change. As long as the Dutch public accepts that The Hague can continue to govern with contempt and indulge in political games as business as usual, very little will change.

Daniel de Liever is an editor at NieuwRechts and writes for various media outlets, including The European Conservative and Junge Freiheit, on cultural and political themes.

Image credits: Michael Foutset via Unsplash