The government is once again allocating billions of euros to asylum and immigration programmes. This is demonstrated by the Ministry of Justice and Security’s budget plans, which coincidentally were briefly published on its website on Monday afternoon.

Asylum costs this year are much higher than budgeted. The gap amounted to more than 3 billion euros. Next year, the government appears to want to prevent a repeat of these movements by allocating more than 4 billion euros to everything related to asylum and migration. In addition, the government has also allocated more than 3 billion euros to receive refugees from Ukraine.

With the additional billions, the government hopes to have more control over the influx, reception and flow of asylum seekers in the coming year. What failed last year: many asylum seekers are still sleeping in appalling conditions in emergency shelters.

The Ministry of Justice and Security wants to target a specific number of reception places for asylum seekers. The total number of permanent shelter places must gradually increase to 41,000, according to the leaked plans. By creating these permanent reception places, the government hopes to better accommodate fluctuations in the flow of asylum seekers. Last year, researchers concluded that the current reception crisis was caused by the government itself, including the premature closure and downsizing of reception sites.

Protecting youth and protecting the rule of law

There are problems not only in implementing asylum policy. Problems also pile up in youth care, leading to long waiting lists and high health care costs. Therefore, the government will allocate an additional 43 million euros next year, taking a first step to “structurally solve the sector’s problems,” according to the leaked plans.

The additional millions should ensure that the sector’s workload decreases and that the sector becomes more attractive as a workplace for new young protectors. The Government wants to ensure that youth protectors have more time in practice to help vulnerable children and their families.

The documents also show that the government wants to crack down on organized crime. To assist the police and the judiciary in this area, the government has allocated 112 million euros on a structural basis. The government hopes to prevent vulnerable young people from becoming involved in crime. Additionally, the additional millions should help disrupt the revenue model of criminal networks and punish perpetrators. Part of the money is intended to protect people “who are on the front lines of the response every day,” such as police officers and judges.

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