It was not a good idea to claim during the election campaign that thousands of refugees would accumulate family trips after family trips. “I shouldn’t have done that,” said VVD leader Dilan Yesilgöz during a debate on what has been called the issue of family reunification. By acknowledging her mistake, outgoing minister Yesilgöz attempted to ease a heated debate over her political integrity.
On Thursday evening, Yesilgöz was held accountable for statements he made shortly after the fall of the cabinet in the summer of 2023 and in the subsequent election campaign. In one of her last debates as outgoing Minister of Justice and Security, Yesilgöz met on Thursday with a House of Representatives, some of which were extremely critical.
Before the debate, new documents showed that shortly after the cabinet fell, Yesilgöz’s ministry had provisional figures that refuted his claims about family travel. These data did not reach Yesilgöz and his colleague, VVD State Secretary Eric van der Burg, until this year, because they may have previously “not provided a complete representation.”
Consciously or unconsciously
In other words: Throughout the campaign, Yesilgöz could have known that the inflated claims he made about travel in connection with family reunification were incorrect. The left part of the House of Representatives, complemented by the CDA and the Christian Union, took this against Yesilgöz very seriously. In the election campaign, which was dominated by the issue of migration, facts and figures matter, parliamentarians told Yesilgöz. At the end of the debate, GroenLinks-PvdA and Volt presented a motion of no confidence, partly because Yesilgöz did not apologize on Thursday afternoon. SP, Denk and PvdD presented a motion of censure. The House will vote on the motions on Tuesday and there is little chance a majority will agree.
Regardless of the question of whether he had consciously or unconsciously told lies, parliamentarians wondered on Thursday evening why Yesilgöz had never bothered to find out to what extent family reunification had occurred. “A minister can be expected to make additional efforts,” said CDA leader Henri Bontenbal.
There seemed to be a reason for it. Yesilgöz’s statements at the time of the cabinet’s fall were almost immediately refuted by experts and organizations such as Vluchtelingenwerk Nederland. They dismissed as fiction his suggestion of an endless backlog of family reunification by refugees.
According to Yesilgöz, the fork is different. He goes on to highlight that officials and implementing organizations told him that the phenomenon of travel in connection with family reunification “occurred regularly.” “If the implementation indicates that ‘these are abuses’ and this happens regularly, then I think I should do something about it,” Yesilgöz said.
The VVD leader referred to a report from the Immigration and Naturalization Service (IND), which already in 2022 stated that family reunification was a “bottleneck.” But nothing was ever known about the extent of this “problem.” However, Yesilgöz stated immediately after the fall of the cabinet that this happened “very often.” On November 18, four days before the elections, Yesilgöz made the much-discussed declaration that thousands of people would participate.
Draw your own conclusion
Several deputies took this against Yesilgöz very seriously. “The Netherlands has been deceived,” said D66 MP Anne-Marijke Podt. SP leader Jimmy Dijk accused Yesilgöz that images were more important than facts. “It wouldn’t have been strange if she had drawn her own conclusions and she had left on her own,” he said.
Not all parties targeted Yesilgöz. The (far) right factions often stayed on the sidelines. JA21 faction leader Joost Eerdmans derisively called the debate a post-trip at the post-trip gate. His party, as well as the PVV, the BBB and, to a lesser extent, the VVD, considered the debate to be largely non-issue. According to these parties, a debate on asylum and migration should focus on the “real problem”: according to them, the arrival of a large number of asylum seekers in the Netherlands and its great impact.
Read also: Yesilgöz ministry knew about the low numbers of ‘reunion after reunification’
New documents show that figures available at the IND on the backlog of refugee journeys were shared with the Ministry of Justice and Security, long before Minister Dilan Yesilgöz claimed this would involve “thousands” of people.
