‘It’s not a holiday resort here’

Minister Faber wants to put an end to all outings for asylum seekers in the Netherlands. She will soon be discussing asylum seekers (COA) with the Central Agency asylum seekers about scrapping their activity budget. She thinks a lot of money is already going to the shelter of asylum seekers and finds the outings a good cutback post.

“It is not a holiday resort here,” said the PVV minister of asylum and migration after the Council of Ministers. “The Netherlands must absolutely not be attractive to come here.”

After the Council of Ministers, Faber emphasized that she will talk to the COA in the short term about the complete activity budget. The COA is a so -called independent administrative body and can therefore have its own policy to a large extent. Faber does not see that as a problem, because the COA gets money from the central government. “It’s very simple: who pays, determines.”

The COA has not yet been able to respond to this new position of the minister. It is also not yet clear how many outings are involved and how large that activity budget is.

This morning at the walk -in of the Council of Ministers, Faber said to be angry that the young asylum seekers from the Frisian Sint Annaparochie still go on an outing during the village fair.

Last year, during the Village Festival in Sint Annaparochie, there were upsents between young people from the area and young asylum seekers. To prevent new unrest, the COA wanted to go to the Efteling for the annual outing on this day. After criticism from Minister Faber, the COA put a line through it.

Now there is a different outing planning for the group, what exactly is not known. But Faber is not happy with that either. “As far as I am concerned, the wheel turners will leave the country as soon as possible,” the minister says. “It says something about this group that people think such a risk is that they want to send them preventively to the Efteling.”

Mayor André van de Nadort of the municipality of Waadhoeke, which includes Sint Annaparochie, finds it “outrageous” that Minister Faber has involved in the trip. “A minister who hits her own policy. It is normal policy for which she is responsible, which simply states in the law: that in addition to childcare, there is also room for relaxing the young asylum seekers.”

According to Van de Nadort, the minister makes the work very difficult for COA employees. “If she throws her own employees in front of the bus via X, who simply implement her policy, then that is outrageous. The money is no problem. It is the minister who cycles right through it.”