Belgian court awards €15,000 to asylum seeker
By Dan Alexe
A Belgian judge's ruling has appeared to confirm the notion that the country is a land of milk and honey for immigrants.
The Brussels first instance tribunal has ordered Fedasil, the federal agency in charge of asylum, to pay a 30-year-old Congolese asylum seeker €15,500 (€500 per day) for not providing him with counsel and accommodation.
Join EUobserver today
Get the EU news that really matters
Instant access to all articles — and 20 years of archives. 14-day free trial.
Choose your plan
... or subscribe as a group
Already a member?
Following the court ruling, bailiffs took the man to Fedasil's premises where he made an inventory of 15 computers and four Peugeot cars, representing a combined value of €16,000, to be seized in case of non-payment by the agency.
According to Fedasil, a representative of which spoke to WAZ.EUobserver, the refugee, who arrived in Belgium in August, has found somewhere to live but is still claiming money for the period when he was roofless.
It is not the first time that Belgian judges have made controversial decisions in order to underline the country's dysfunctional institutions. In this case, the penalty imposed on a state authority coincides with widespread anxiety caused by a growing wave of economic migrants, particularly from Serbia and Macedonia, who can now enter the EU without a visa.
On Wednesday, the Flemish language daily De Morgen reported that 1.3 million Albanians have already applied for new passports in preparation for the visa-free regime, which is expected to be granted in Albania in November.
The Belgian federal structures charged with administering the flux of refugees have been created in a piecemeal way, year after year, as the situation has deteriorated.
Fedasil is dispatching the asylum seekers to a network of federal refugee centres, places run by the Red Cross and some locally administered facilities. In total, Belgium gives just over 17,000 units of accommodation to asylum seekers but there are more than 23,000 registered persons.
That leaves more than 6,000 people who have to take care of themselves, very often without resources or language skills, although it is unclear if all those registered at a certain point in time are still in the country.
Some asylum seekers are lodged in army barracks. Fedasil has put up another 1,200 refugees in hotel rooms. The agency is usually looking for cheap hotels but their numbers are limited and the whole system has long been overstretched.
Only asylum seekers who sue Fedasil are put up in hotels rooms. In September, 103 sued the agency compared to just 10 over the whole of 2009.
Philippe Courard, the state secretary in charge of asylum policy, said hotel accommodation of this kind cost the state more than €300,000 last year. The federal government decided on Wednesday (27 October) to create 2,000 more places for refugees, mostly in army barracks, which is still a far cry from the 6,000 slots urgently needed.
For a while, Belgian courts systematically sentenced Fedasil to a €250 per day penalty for failing to accommodate asylum seekers. When the agency, backed by the government, declared it would rather pay than comply with the courts‘ rulings, the tribunals doubled the fine.
However, last week's visit by bailiffs to Fedasil was the first time that a sentence had been put into practice and property had actually been earmarked for eventual seizure.