Some 40% of first time asylum requests made in the Netherlands will not succeed because the applicants have already tried to get refugee status in another EU country, the Telegraaf reported on Thursday.

Under the Dublin rules, asylum seekers are the responsibility of the EU country where they first made an application for refugee status, and it is up to those countries to assess claims and deal with the people who fail.

In total, 18,190 people applied for asylum in the Netherlands last year. Some 12,800 request were refused, 7,310 on the grounds of the Dublin treaty.

The national audit office investigated the way the Dublin treaty worked in 2018 and found just 15% of asylum seekers do go back to the country where they originally claimed asylum.

‘The Dublin rules have been around a long time and don’t work so well any more,’ junior justice minister Ank Broekers-Knol told the Telegraaf. ‘Send them back to Greece? In fact they can’t go back, because the accommodation there is no good,’ she said. ‘Nor is it easy [to send them back] to Italy.’

The best option, the minister said, would be to send them back to their country of origin, but, she pointed out, this can only happen if that country cooperates.

In practice, asylum seekers whose claims have been rejected in one EU country can easily move on to another because of the open border system.