There is no brochure put together by people smugglers promoting the Netherlands as a great place to request asylum, a spokeswoman for the European border management organisation Frontex told DutchNews.nl on Tuesday.

Dutch media reported earlier that people traffickers had produced a ‘brochure’ comparing the Netherlands, Sweden, Denmark, Germany and Norway but the information actually comes from an Arabic language website, Frontex spokeswoman Ewa Moncure told DutchNews.nl.

Frontex was alerted to the website by a refugee from Syria during routine questioning and translated the information it contained into English, Moncure said.

That information was part of a presentation made by Frontex officials in December 2014 but was last week placed on Facebook by Denmark’s new integration minister Inger Stojberg to support her demands that handouts to refugees be cut.

Internet

People smugglers are increasingly using the internet, social media sites and services like Viber and Whatsapp to attract customers and spread information, Moncure said.

‘Some websites offer lists of documents that the smugglers can produce, others the times of boat departures… This does not surprise us,’ she said. ‘Migrants know there are differences between countries. But the presence of family, communities and support networks is also a very important factor.’

The Frontex translation states that refugee families are entitled to €1,600 a month in the Netherlands and that the government will pay for a house, neither of which is correct.