The first of 250 Syrian refugees to be admitted to the Netherlands are set to arrive in Amsterdam on Monday, according to the Volkskrant.

However, pressure is mounting on junior justice minister Fred Teeven to admit more people fleeing the civil war, the paper says. Germany, for example, is accepting 10,000 people while Norway is taking in 1,000.

Teeven, however, refuses to accept more than 250 ‘specially selected’ people, despite opposition calls for a more generous policy.

Three million

Some three million people have been displaced from their homes because of the fighting and on Friday the UN called on European countries to accept far more than the current total.

ChristenUnie MP Joël Voordewind told the Volkskrant 150 of the people assigned to the Netherlands are still in Lebanon because no suitable accommodation has been found for them.

‘Only 100 people [who made it to] Jordan can come to the Netherlands,’ he said. ‘Work on finding houses for these people started far too late.’

Teeven, however, believes refugees are better off remaining as close to their homes as possible. ‘The solution is in the region, not here,’ he told MPs on Friday. The Netherlands has allocated €76.5m to local refugee services.