Groningen takes in families with young children from Ter Apel
The municipality is opening 100 temporary beds at its Europaweg emergency shelter at the request of the Ministry of Asylum and Migration, to ease pressure on the Ter Apel application centre.
The municipality of Groningen is temporarily taking in families with young children for whom there is no room in Ter Apel. The first families arrive on Wednesday at the emergency shelter on the Europaweg, where the municipality has made 100 beds available. The ministry asked for the extra places, and the shelter will initially run for three weeks.
Minister Van den Brink earlier wrote a letter to parliament calling the situation in Ter Apel "untenable". He asked all Dutch municipalities urgently to create extra places.
Alderman (wethouder) Jalt de Haan said the pressure on Ter Apel is "unchanged high". "Groningen stands for humane reception of refugees and we do not want people to be forced to sleep outside," he said.
De Haan said Groningen already meets the spreidingswet, the dispersal law, and that other municipalities should do their part too. "It is up to central government to come up with a structural solution," he said.
Until recently the Europaweg site housed 150 asylum seekers. Most have since moved to the COA location on the Sint-Petersburgweg in the city of Groningen.
The municipality says residents and businesses nearby have been informed. A spokesperson for De Haan said the situation will be reviewed if, after three weeks, Ter Apel still has too few places or no alternatives are available in other municipalities.
Follow the story: COA
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Spreidingswet
The law that spreads the reception of asylum seekers across Dutch municipalities. Each province and municipality is asked to provide a share of the places; a municipality that does not can be placed under supervision and, in the end, instructed by the minister.
COA (Centraal Orgaan opvang asielzoekers)
The independent government body that houses and looks after asylum seekers while their applications are processed. It runs reception centres across the country and falls under the minister responsible for asylum and migration.
Ter Apel
Ter Apel is a village in the province of Groningen, in the north-east of the Netherlands, where the country's main registration centre for asylum seekers is located. New asylum seekers are registered and screened there before being moved on to other reception locations. In Dutch news, 'Ter Apel' is often used to mean this registration centre itself, and shortages of space there are a recurring topic.