Campaign group loses court case for more refugees

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A campaign group that wants to make the Netherlands take the number of refugees agreed with the European Union lost its court case on Friday, reports the Parool.

We Gaan Ze Halen, a charitable foundation whose name means ‘let’s bring them here’, is attempting to force the Dutch state to take 8,712 refugees from camps in Greece and Italy, as agreed with other EU members states in September 2015.

The Dutch have another six months to fulfil this pledge, having taken around 1,400 people so far – the organisation claims – and a judge in The Hague ruled that because the deadline is not yet up, it is too soon to rule on the matter.

The foundation will appeal. ‘It is distressing that the court finds that it is too soon to judge this claim when refugees have often been sitting in camps for two years,’ said the organisation’s lawyers, Gert-Jan van den Bergh and Adriaan Stoop to the Parool.

Last year the organisation demonstrated by driving cars to The Hague to show they would pick refugees up themselves, if necessary. It has been campaigning for almost a year to oblige the state to fulfil its part in the EU pledge to take in 160,000 refugees.

The subject of refugees has been contentious in the Netherlands. Although numbers dropped dramatically last year after a peak in October 2015, immigration was one of the key issues in the Dutch general elections.

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