The court halts the deportation of male refugees to Belgium
The Raad van State, the highest administrative court in the Netherlands, ruled to prevent asylum minister David van Wil (from the VVD party) from returning unmarried male asylum seekers to Belgium. This is due to a real risk that these men would not receive "basic needs" such as shelter, hygiene, and food in Belgium, which the court considered a violation of human rights, and therefore the Netherlands must examine their asylum applications itself.
This ruling was issued in the case of a man who claims he was born in Afghanistan, and the Dutch authorities had previously decided not to process his asylum request, based on the European Dublin Agreement, which states that the European country where the asylum seeker first registers is responsible, which is Belgium in this case.
However, the court sees that this system cannot be applied in this case. It has been found that Belgium suffers from a permanent shortage of accommodation for unmarried male asylum seekers, and the problem is no longer temporary but has turned into a structural crisis. There is also ambiguity about whether these individuals can access emergency shelters or homeless accommodation, in addition to the Belgian authorities' failure to implement court rulings and pay the imposed fines. The court described this situation as a "systemic failure" in the Belgian system towards this category of asylum seekers, depriving them of the essentials of life upon their return, in clear violation of human rights.
The court added that this situation undermines the Dublin system and the expected cooperation between EU countries, emphasizing that the Netherlands can no longer rely on Belgium to provide adequate reception for these refugees.
The court had allowed in March to return these refugees to Belgium despite the "relatively bad" situation, based on promises to improve the situation there. However, it has now confirmed that those promises have not been fulfilled, and there are no signs of improving reception capacity.