Backlog for Dutch asylum applicants as high as during the 2015 migrant crisis

euronews.com:

The backlog of asylum applications in the Netherlands is almost as high as during the 2015 refugee crisis, according to new data.

Figures from Eurostat show that the Dutch immigration service has not yet responded to almost 30,000 asylum seekers.

A total of 29,460 asylum applications to the Immigration and Naturalisation Service (IND) are pending, Eurostat noted.

This is only 180 applications fewer than the backlog in 2015, even though the number of new applications in 2022 is much less.

Martijn van der Linden, a spokesperson for the Dutch Council for Refugees, said they were "very concerned" about the impact of the backlog on refugees and asylum seekers.

"On paper, the Netherlands has a lightning-fast, careful, and efficient asylum policy that is admired by other European countries, but due to the lack of structural funding, the IND had to reduce costs and dismiss staff shortly after the refugee crisis in 2015," van der Linden told Euronews.

"Therefore, in recent years asylum seekers had to wait up to almost two years before their asylum procedure even starts, whereas it should be a few weeks."

"Since 2018, we have warned the Dutch government that waiting times are too long and that action needs to be taken. Unfortunately, not much has changed."

The influx of asylum seekers in the Netherlands has resulted in unprecedented action from NGOs and humanitarian groups.

For the first time ever, Doctors Without Borders (MSF) sent a team of medical workers to the Netherlands after a build-up of migrants at the Ter Apel asylum centre.

Around 700 asylum seekers were living in "increasingly inhumane and unacceptable," sleeping outside the asylum centre for days while awaiting registration. A three-month-old baby died at the overcrowded