Emergency measures to tackle ‘asylum crisis’ are not legally feasible
The Dutch government wants to use emergency measures in its asylum policy. Asylum Minister Marjolein Faber believes this has also been legally tested. Several legal experts, including Mark Klaassen, Associate Professor of migration law and Wim Voermans, Professor of Constitutional and Administrative Law, dispute that such crisis measures are an appropriate tool in the current situation. They explain this to ‘RTL News’.
According to Mark Klaassen, there is currently no reason to apply emergency measures as there is no exceptional situation in the context of the Aliens Act. An exceptional, crisis situation would be a war or a natural disaster, for example. There's no question of that at present. Asylum policy is largely determined by European law. ‘The idea of halting the decision process on asylum applications is contrary to EU law’.
Professor Voermans adds that after instituting an emergency procedure, a bill must always be made which then also has to be reviewed by the Dutch Council of State and the European Commission: 'I'm very curious to see how they will decide.'
‘The government is clearly pushing the limits of the law’, Mark Klaassen says, increasing the risk of breaking the rules and leading to more court proceedings. He believes that the problem is not so much related to the influx of refugees as with the reception facilities. ‘There is no peak in numbers’.
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Watch the RTL News broadcast (in Dutch, from 7.45 min)
Read the full RTL News article (in Dutch)
(Photo: Kevin Bückert through Unsplash