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Netherlands withdraws its own asylum plan if it does not go far enough in the EU

by AI | 31.Jan 2025 | Europe in brief AI

If the European migration policy does not go as the Dutch Minister Marjolein Faber (Asylum and Migration) intends, she will make her own plan. The minister said this in Warsaw, where the EU ministers responsible for migration are consulting on stricter return rules for rejected and illegal asylum seekers. However, she does not completely turn her back on the European Union.

Asylum seekers try to reach Europe via the Mediterranean Sea. Photo: Antonio Sempere/EUROPA PRESS/dpa

WARSAW (ANP) – “Of course we want to cooperate, but it’s about the joint goals we can achieve. At the moment it doesn’t go the way I want at European level, then you just have to make your national plan too,” said Faber Thursday after the meeting.

If Faber has a particular goal that she can achieve “better and faster and easier” through the European Union, “then I will not refrain from doing so.”

In the discussion paper of the Polish presidency of the EU, which the ministers discussed on Wednesday, it is emphasized that it is important that the EU member states act as a bloc. If member states make agreements themselves with other countries, there is a risk that the governments of these countries will increasingly impose conditions on the return of asylum seekers. This would “weaken the position of the member states and the European Union as a whole,” warns President Poland.

The Netherlands, among others, has made agreements with Morocco about the return of asylum seekers who are not allowed to stay in the Netherlands. Faber is in talks with Algeria about this.

Faber does not share Poland’s concerns. “As a bloc you are naturally bigger, but the knowledge we gain there, we can share with European member states. I do not see that as negative. I think you can strengthen each other in that.”

(January 30, 2025)