Anneleen Van Bossuyt adopted a slogan that failed to bring success to her former colleague Marjolein Faber, the short-lived far-right Dutch minister: "The strictest policy ever implemented." Belgium's minister for asylum, migration and social integration intended to show firmness in her approach while distinguishing herself from Vlaams Belang, the powerful far-right party in Flanders that is closely aligned with Geert Wilders' party, which brought down the ruling coalition in the Netherlands in June. Van Bossuyt has criticized the party's inability to confront the "asylum tsunami" that is allegedly threatening the country.

A member of the Nieuw-Vlaamse Alliantie (N-VA, the center-right Flemish nationalist party) − the party of Belgian prime minister Bart De Wever − Van Bossuyt, 45, has a clear objective: "To ensure that Belgium is no longer the weak link in European migration policy," she told Le Monde. "While asylum requests in the European Union fell by 12% in 2024 [compared to 2023], they rose by the same percentage in Belgium. That is abnormal and shows that people find more advantages here than elsewhere." The country registered around 40,000 asylum requests in 2024, "of which 15,000 were submitted by individuals who had already applied for or obtained asylum in another EU member state. We will exclude from reception those already benefiting from protection elsewhere, and the requests of those rejected in another country will be declared inadmissible," Van Bossuyt said. In April, she stated that the threshold of 50,000 requests could be reached this year.

You have 70% of this article left to read. The rest is for subscribers only.