A migration opt-out would mean the loss of a useful scapegoat and that is the last thing some members of the new government want, says Gareth Davies, professor of EU law at VU University in Amsterdam.

So the new Dutch government says in its plans that it is going to “hand in an opt-out clause for EU migration and asylum policy”. That will enable the country to take control of the area itself and begin the strictest migration and asylum regime ever.

It’s not going to happen of course, any more than I am going to hand in an opt-out for paying taxes, seductive though the idea is. For EU law in this area is law, agreed by the member states and European parliament, and agreements can only be changed with the consent of both sides. There are no opt-outs once you’ve agreed.

They can ask for one, certainly. They can put it on the agenda in Brussels, and negotiate and push as hard as they can. But they are unlikely to get it, and, even worse, if they did it would not help them at all, because if you actually, genuinely, want to reduce migration then the only possible way is in co-operation with other states.

An opt-out would be more of an open door policy, a licence for all the other member states to let their migrants wander towards the Netherlands, just as the UK is discovering that more people are crossing the channel now it has stopped co-operating with France.

One thing at a time. There will be lots of sympathy for the Dutch position, because most member states are hostile to migration at the moment. However, fewer for the Netherlands means more for the others, so they are unlikely to translate their sympathy into agreement for an opt-out. They have no incentive.

Which is lucky for the cabinet, because if they got their opt-out it would be a disaster for their policy. They want fewer migrants, but migration is not something you can stop on your own. What could a Dutch government free of legal constraints do? Be extremely nasty to incoming migrants? Unless they were nastier than whatever warlord ruled the country of origin, it might have somewhat limited effect. It’s hard to be scarier than Assad.

But even if it did redirect asylum seekers to friendlier European countries, there would of course be a race to the bottom in no time. If Dutch policy means that migrants stay in Germany or Belgium, we can be fairly confident that those countries will act fast and firmly, and the Dutch will lose their ‘comparative advantage’.

The Netherlands could try policing the borders. For some reason the image of soldiers at the border is comforting for some, but the long, flat, Dutch land border is uncloseable, not even if every soldier stood hand in hand in a long chain, with or without daisies in their hair. Any serious attempt to physically prevent entry of migrants would have huge social and economic consequences without being effective.

A recurring dream of those hostile to migration is sending people back. Not even necessarily to their country of origin, but just somewhere, anywhere else. Alas, for these dreamers, that requires the co-operation of other states, either the EU states they have passed through, if they are to be sent there, or the African or Asian countries they originally came from.

These latter countries have a somewhat limited motivation to co-operate, but are significantly more inclined to talk to the EU than to the Netherlands alone. So wherever the Dutch government wants to return its migrants to, it will involve intense co-operation with other EU lands. An opt-out? It would be a clean shot in the Netherlands’ own foot.

The holy grail, for the anti-migrant government, is to stop migrants getting here in the first place, which in reality means stopping them getting into the EU. One way is to try and police the external border, or pay other countries to do it, as the EU is currently trying. Apart from being somewhat inhuman, this isn’t particularly effective. At any rate, it doesn’t seem to have reduced the flow to the level that the Dutch government would like.

Motives to migrate

The only other alternative (other than more radical, intriguing, but politically unlikely experiments such as open borders) is to try and reduce the motivation of the migrants to come in the first place, by improving the conditions in their lands of origin. This is no easy path, but it is the only one which could actually lead to a world where millions of people will no longer risk their lives to reach the EU.

So if the Dutch government actually, genuinely, seriously wanted to stop people coming it would be calling for massively increased EU involvement in development and aid in origin countries, policies aimed at increasing political stability, jobs, and wellbeing for the populations there. That would be an anti-migration programme. Not an easy one, admittedly, but the only one that might, at least in the medium term, make a difference.

Either way, the only way to get any control over migration is through more, not less, EU co-ordination and action. A Dutch opt-out, the Netherlands going it alone, would be more of a surrender, motivating other Member States to pass their migrants on and making it even harder for the Netherlands to send them back.

No wish to win

So why is the Dutch government not rushing to Brussels to call for more EU action? Quite simply, because it doesn’t want its policy to succeed. That is, in fact, its worst nightmare. The VVD and BBB represent employers and agriculture respectively, who benefit enormously from cheap migrant labour. They want people to keep coming, but they just don’t want them to have any rights, because workers without rights are cheaper.

They also keep down the wages at the bottom of the labour market generally. Their goal is not to stop migration, but to keep migrants insecure. The PVV by contrast, if migration was ever to stop, would lose its only reason for existence. It is a party that depends on migration more than any other.

Its goal is surely for migration to continue in a way that allows it to put the blame on someone else. Europe, in this case. Who knows who the next scapegoat will be if that doesn’t work?

This column was published earlier in the NRC