The city of Arnhem has agreed a 30-year deal to accommodate 1,700 asylum seekers – more than double its quota under Dutch government rules.

The city council said it wanted to put an end to the “inhumane” system of shuttling refugees around temporary shelters and help them participate in society by offering them language courses and social activities from day one.

Paul Smeulders, Arnhem’s alderman responsible for financial affairs and refugees, told Trouw the city was drawing a “hard bottom line” to give refugees a chance to rebuild their lives, rather than being “shunted from sports hall to sports hall”.

Arnhem currently hosts 2,200 asylum seekers in temporary accommodation, but has plans for a permanent development at Rijnpark that will house 800 people.

Under the terms of the so-called “spreading law”, introduced earlier this year to ease the bottleneck at the reception centre in Ter Apel, the city is obliged to find space for at least 720 refugees.

“We think that a city like Arnhem, with the capacity we have, can easily offer 2,000 accommodation places for refugees, 1,700 of them through the [asylum accommodation agency] Coa and 300 for displaced Ukrainians,” Smeulders said.

The city council is also receiving €3 million from the refugee accommodation agency to provide services to refugees, such as language classes, and connect them with local volunteers.

“Wasted talent”

“At the moment there is a huge amount of wasted talent at asylum seekers’ centres all over the Netherlands,” Smeulders said. “Asylum seekers spend years in a blocked system. There are huge shortages in the labour market, but people in asylum seekers’ centres can hardly do anything apart from play table tennis.”

Smeulders, who represents the left-wing GroenLinks party in the local coalition, added that Arnhem would hold firm on its course even if the incoming government restricts provisions for refugees.

“If a new cabinet cuts back on the provisions for asylum seekers, Arnhem will not follow,” he said. “We want to accommodate people in a humane way.”