The decision by State Secretary for Asylum and Migration Nicole de Moor to not provide shelter for single men applying for asylum in the near future will remain in place for the time being – despite the fact that it is against the law. The measure will apply for "as short a time as possible."
On Tuesday evening, it was announced that Belgium would temporarily stop providing single men who are applying for asylum with shelter in the network of Fedasil, the agency responsible for the reception of asylum seekers, despite it being a legal entitlement. Already this group had been restricted from gaining access for almost two years, but this decision took away any lingering hope.
De Moor said she took the measure to prevent families with children from ending up on the streets. Even though the Green and Socialist parties insisted that she withdraw that measure, it became clear on Friday after the Council of Ministers that the measure would remain in place.
"A lot of concerns have been raised, I have those concerns as well. I have made the urgency very clear," De Moor said during a press conference on Friday.
She and Prime Minister Alexander De Croo stressed that this was "a temporary measure," without putting a specific timing on it, arguing that predicting the asylum flow is not a science. "We are doing everything we can to keep it as short as possible," De Croo said. "The sooner we are able to create places, the shorter it will be."
De Moor is now also looking for additional shelters in winter by reaching out to campsites and youth shelters that are not being used during the winter months, as previously happened in the municipalities of Theux and Bredene.
These campsites and youth shelters all spread all over the Belgian territory and not just in Brussels, "just as there is a spread of asylum seekers over the Belgian territory," Sieghild Lacoere, De Moor's spokesperson, told Bruzz.
"Only today it is not possible to immediately give shelter to single men because there is a shortage of reception places," she said. "As a result, there are a lot more people in the Brussels-Capital Region looking for a place to sleep."
Solutions in the making
Lacoere added that there is a shelter agreement between the Asylum and Migration Ministry and the Brussels regional authorities, under which the Federal Government is funding additional places in Brussels' homeless shelters. "It concerns about 1,500 extra places. So we are certainly not leaving Brussels to its own devices and will remain in talks to see if more efforts are needed."
Additionally, smaller "satellites" near collective centres are also an option: vacant buildings near existing shelters, whose staff could also be deployed there, she explained. "This way, we do not have to recruit additional staff because there is simply no staff to be found."
Lastly, "far-reaching talks" to place containers from the EU are also ongoing.
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In the meantime, De Croo stressed that Belgium is already making unprecedented efforts. Still, NGOs and lawyers have been stressing that the authorities could be doing a lot more for over a year.
To strengthen the Winter Plan, government partners have also been asked to come up with proposals that should lead to an updated version within two to three weeks to get the situation "back to normal."
Before the start of the Council of Ministers, Deputy Prime Minister Petra De Sutter was one of the politicians who spoke out strongly against De Moor's decision. "The urgency with which the reception crisis as a whole must be addressed has become clear within the government," she responded afterwards. "Even the other parties now understand that places need to be added as soon as possible, making De Moor's instruction self-executing. After all, everyone entitled to shelter should be able to get it, including single men."
