To many Dutch voters, it came as no great surprise. This week, the Senate rejected a package of immigration laws hailed by the outgoing Schoof government as the toughest ever devised. It was not merely the left that sank the proposals. Two members of the government’s coalition – Prime Minister Rob Jetten’s own D66 and the Christian Democrats – voted against. Remarkably, so did party behind the proposals itself: Geert Wilders’s Freedom party.
The underlying message, to many, is that it is the public that is the problem, not the failure to curb or manage immigration
Wilders withdrew his support after failing to restore some original, stricter provisions, which would have criminalised illegal residence. D66 senators, for their part, opposed the measures on principle; they had never much cared for them, notwithstanding their leader Rob Jetten’s insistence during the election campaign that he, too, favoured firmer and more controlled immigration.
For more than four decades – or two generations if you wish – a growing share of the Dutch electorate has signalled its unease with the country’s persistently high levels of immigration. With left and centre politicians stubbornly unwilling to engage – and prone to denouncing those who do as far-right or far worse – voters have increasingly drifted towards the right. From the misnamed far-right Centrumpartij in the 1980s and its various splinters, to more modern insurgents.
The pattern became clear in 2002, when voters rallied behind the flamboyant and contradictory (he was both ultra-liberal and deeply conservative) Pim Fortuyn. His meteoric rise, crowned by a striking victory in the Rotterdam municipal elections, was cut short by his assassination at the hands of a far-left activist, just days before he might have repeated the feat on the national stage.
Then came Wilders, who entered parliament with his Freedom party in 2006 after breaking with the centre-right VVD. While rival movements rose and fell, his proved more durable, culminating in a decisive electoral success in 2023 and, ultimately, participation in government for the first time within the short-lived Schoof cabinet.
Research conducted in the wake of the 2023 election by pollster Maurice de Hond found that no fewer than 76 per cent of Dutch voters believed immigration should be reduced drastically. For many at that point, it had become a question of now or never. If the political centre would not act, then – so the reasoning went – it would have to fall to Geert Wilders to do so.
What followed was a government riven with infighting. Yet a package of asylum-curbing measures was eventually cobbled together, scraping through the lower house by the narrowest of margins.
But when the Senate finally had its say this week, much of it unravelled. One proposal did survive Tuesday afternoon’s cull: the reintroduction of the so-called two-status system. Under this scheme, asylum seekers are once again divided into two categories. Those facing individual persecution – for example on account of their political beliefs or sexual orientation – are granted A-status. Those fleeing more general conditions of war or violence are assigned B-status, a designation that makes it considerably more difficult for family members to join them.
The new government, meanwhile, insists it is far from finished. Within a fortnight, fresh asylum measures are to be unveiled. The Senate may have rejected the emergency asylum bill championed by the likes of Wilders, but Prime Minister Rob Jetten has made clear that many of its provisions will simply be reintroduced by other means. The fiasco in the Senate, he insists, lies squarely at the feet of Wilders’s party.
In the coming weeks, the responsible minister is expected to present revised proposals tightening the rules on declaring individuals unwelcome – ensuring that those with no real prospect of asylum in the Netherlands are, in fact, kept out. At the same time, officials are said to be pondering – as only civil servants can – fresh legal avenues to prosecute asylum seekers who refuse to leave the country. But really, many voters wonder, is anything truly being resolved? The Dutch electorate has spent decades asking for control; The Hague continues to offer process.
Meanwhile, something rather more ominous is unfolding. Jetten’s government is pressing ahead with the Spreidingswet – the dispersal law for asylum seekers. In practice, this means distributing them across the country in small- and medium-sized centres while they await formal admission – a process which, in many cases, drags on for years.
Unsurprisingly, stiff resistance has followed. A number of municipalities – under pressure from concerned, indignant or simply alarmed residents – last year began declining requests to house what often amounts to hundreds of idle young men, largely from African and Middle Eastern backgrounds, in relatively small communities. The newly appointed Christian Democrat minister for migration has now urged municipalities to reconsider.
Some have obliged. In the wake of that appeal, according to a Dutch daily, at least 17 towns have indicated a willingness to accept additional asylum seekers, a decision that has already prompted street protests in several places. The locations earmarked, it seems, lie mostly at the heart of the community: a town hall in a municipality on the verge of absorption into a larger city, a village’s only hotel, a church, the local football ground.
More striking still is the manner in which these decisions have been made. In many instances, there has been little in the way of the usual and meaningful consultation. Residents have instead been presented with announcements delivered mere days before the expected arrival of the new neighbours. The result has been predictable: protests, legal challenges and, in the village of Loosdrecht, delay – after local police said they could not guarantee the safety of the 110 men due to be housed there on their day of arrival.
The underlying message, to many, is that it is the public that is the problem, not the failure to curb or manage immigration. After a judge in the Loosdrecht case ruled on Wednesday that humane treatment of asylum seekers outweighs the interests of local residents, police somehow managed to find the time and manpower to break up a fresh outbreak of protests in the village later that same day.
That this renewed effort to house thousands of asylum seekers across the country should coincide with the Senate’s rejection of stricter immigration measures may, of course, be mere coincidence. To many voters, however, it is confirmation that their concerns are still not being heard. Each step by the government seems only to pour oil on an already lively fire, further eroding what is now a record-low level of trust in Dutch politics – and stirring the potential for unrest.
Meanwhile, no one is closing the door – not even a little. As around a thousand asylum seekers continue to arrive in the Netherlands every week, the problem only grows. One question lingers. For years, curbing uncontrolled asylum has been regarded by many as a matter of now or never. Increasingly, Dutch voters are wondering whether it has quietly become ‘never at all’.
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