EU ruling forces Netherlands to process 140,000 shelved Ukrainian asylum applications

An EU Court of Justice ruling requires the Dutch Immigration and Naturalisation Service (IND) to evaluate over 140,000 previously shelved asylum applications from Ukrainian refugees, placing severe additional strain on the country's immigration infrastructure, NOS reported.

These requests had previously been shelved or put on hold by Dutch authorities because the applicants already received immediate defense privileges under the EU's Temporary Protection Directive (TPD).

The Netherlands initially chose not to process individual asylum claims from Ukrainian refugees. Because the TPD provided them with a swift, collective right to housing, healthcare, work, and education, individual status determination was seen as logistically unnecessary and a strain on immigration capacity. However, the European Court clarified that holding asylum evaluations in perpetual limbo solely because someone has temporary protection violates EU law.

Minister of Asylum and Migration Van den Brink acknowledged that the Cabinet faces a major operational problem, as the IND fundamentally lacks the staffing capacity to process 140,000 complex files simultaneously.

To make the workflow manageable, the minister plans to exploit legal leeway within the court ruling by processing the applications in phases. The government's intended processing order is for new asylum seekers currently arriving into the country to have first priority.

Then the IND would start working on the existing regular backlog of roughly 50,000 asylum seekers already on the active waiting list. With the lowest priority going to the 140,000 shelved Ukrainian applications.

The current temporary protection rules for Ukrainians are slated to expire on March 4, 2028. Representatives from VluchtelingenWerk Nederland emphasize that many refugees face intense anxiety over living in a state of "permanent temporariness". Obtaining formal asylum status would grant them permanent residency rights and much-needed long-term stability.

Getting an individual evaluation is not a guarantee of permanent stay. The IND recently resumed case-by-case assessments and enforces a strict country policy. If the IND establishes that an applicant originates from or can safely relocate to a secure region within Ukraine, their Dutch asylum claim can be rejected.

The case will now return to the Council of State, the highest administrative court in the Netherlands, which must apply the European court's answers to Dutch law. Once that ruling is finalized, the concrete operational timeline for the IND will become clearer.