Dutch refugee policy official refuses to work with new right-wing coalition government

Geert Wilders’s far-right Freedom Party was the big winner in November's election. Photograph: Sem van der Wal/ANP/AFP via Getty ImagesRutger Groot Wassink, who was chair of the Dutch local authorities’ asylum committee, as well as social affairs chief responsible for asylum strategy in Amsterdam, left office with a scathing attack on the country’s new right-wing coalition, which is now almost complete.

The parties put their choice of premier – Dick Schoof, formerly head of the security service – in place last month, but there have since been difficulties in the selection of ministers, with two Freedom Party nominees forced to pledge publicly to moderate their behaviour while in office.

He said that while the new coalition promised the toughest immigration regime in the country’s history, very little would ultimately come of those plans because they were in conflict with existing domestic laws and international treaties. On Monday, asylum minister-designate Marjolein Faber, of the Freedom Party, distanced herself from her previous view that mass migration to Europe is part of a plot to replace the white population with non-whites, a view generally regarded as an unfounded conspiracy theory.

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