Copyright pic: https://unsplash.com/@ross_savchyn
Last year 18,190 people applied for asylum in the Netherlands. Of that number, 12,800 were refused with 7,310 on the “Dublin Treaty” grounds.
The treaty states that asylum seekers are the responsibility of the EU country where they first applied for refugee status. It is up to those countries to assess the claims of those who fail in their applications. This has resulted in 40% of first-time asylum requests in the Netherlands being rejected on the grounds that those applicants had already attempted refugee status in another EU country.
Junior Justice Minister Ank Broekers-Knol states that the best option would be to send the applicants back to their country of origin, but this scenario would only work if that country cooperates. “Send them back to Greece? In fact, they can’t go back, because the accommodation there is no good,’ Broekers-Knol said.
