“The European Commission has now informed us that the Netherlands wants to stay out of the implementation of the agreement. We have to take our asylum policy into our own hands again,” Migration Minister Marjolein Faber told reporters.
In a letter to the European Commission, the minister wrote that the new Dutch government wants to “significantly” reduce immigration to the Netherlands “so that it can continue to fulfil its constitutional obligations: to provide housing, health care and education.”
The Dutch government will ask to be excluded when amending the EU Treaty.
Marjolein Faber wrote in the letter.
Regarding the exclusion request, the European Commission spokesman stressed in his press conference on Wednesday that the EU's rules on asylum and migration are still binding on the Netherlands, and will remain so until the EU's basic treaty is amended.
The EU spokesman said they did not expect to amend the EU treaty in the near future, but welcomed the fact that Marjolein Faber wrote in her letter that the Netherlands would continue to implement the European Refugee Pact, which was adopted at the beginning of the year and will come into force in just two years.
The Dutch government has made it clear that the exclusion will occur if the treaty amendment is opened, which will not happen at the present time.
– The spokesman stressed.
The Dutch coalition government is planning to declare a state of emergency and suspend parts of the asylum law without parliamentary approval. But the issue is currently dividing the four-party coalition, with the right-wing New Social Contract party already saying it will not support the state of emergency bill if it does not have a proper legal basis.
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