The three coalition parties say they have no plans to withdraw legislation to ensure all Dutch local authorities take their fair share of refugees, despite gains for far-right and anti-refugee local parties in this week’s council elections.

According to research by Ipsos I&O ahead of the vote, housing was by far the most important issue facing the country, with public safety in second place. But in areas where there have been protests against refugee centres, far-right parties, many of them local groups, made major gains.

“The law is the law,” D66 parliamentary party leader Jan Paternotte said on Thursday in response to the results. Paternotte said he understood the frustrations in some councils about the refugee issue, because national governments “have made a mess” of things.

The far-right Forum voor Democratie took part in 104 of the 342 local authority elections this week and won 299 seats, compared with 55 seats on 50 councils in 2022.

In Velsen and Epe, the party emerged as the largest, while in Purmerend, Doetinchem and Eindhoven it more than doubled its support, giving it a key role in forming new local administrations. In Haarlem and Alphen aan den Rijn, FvD is three times as big as it was.

Geert Wilders’ PVV almost doubled its number of councillors from 56 to 98 but stood in only 40 places. In Terneuzen, Zeeland, where the mayor resigned because of threats from anti-refugee groups, the PVV doubled its support to become the biggest party on the council.

In Wilders’ home town of Venlo, however, PVV support halved and the big winner was Venloos Burger Initiatief, which had been set up specifically to campaign against a refugee centre.

In The Hague, where Hart voor Den Haag won seven seats and now has 16 on the council, leader Richard de Mos has also made refugees a key theme. “I and my party are going to do the maximum we can not to implement the spreading law,” he said during the final debate on Tuesday evening.

There were similar messages and gains for the far right in Hoorn, Zwijndrecht, Maassluis, Oldebroek and Rhenen. In Hardenberg, a party which opposed the development of a refugee centre rose from two to 10 seats.

Legislation

The previous administration had planned to withdraw the legislation ensuring an equal spread of refugees round the country but ran out of time before it collapsed, and the new minority administration has said it intends to keep the law.

The refugee settlement agency COA estimates that 38,000 beds will be needed for refugees in the coming 18 months, and the government has urged councils to show solidarity with each other and spread the burden more fairly.

Asylum minister Bart van den Brink said he hoped to prevent problems with new council administrations which are opposed to refugee centres and that he planned to “discuss, discuss and discuss”.

“My job is to put the law into practice. I have to reduce the number of refugees… and at the same time … we have have a joint task ahead of us,” he told RTL Nieuws. “And that is implementing the law in the Netherlands together.”

Fewer refugees

The Dutch immigration service IND rejected 56% more asylum requests last year than in 2024, national statistics agency CBS said last month.

In total, officials approved 7,400 requests in 2025 and rejected 8,100. They also assessed 5,600 fewer requests in 2025 than in 2024, despite efforts to speed up the process.

In total, 24,070 people applied for refugee status in the Netherlands for the first time last year, 8,000 fewer than in 2024, according to the 2025 IND figures.