Dutch Asylum Centre Faces €3.75 Million Fine for Three Weeks of Overcrowding

Ter Apel, 18 February 2026
The Netherlands’ primary asylum registration centre has accumulated staggering penalty fees totalling €3.75 million after housing over 2,100 people for three consecutive weeks, breaching its 2,000-person capacity limit. Daily fines of €50,000 continue mounting as the facility struggles with a bottleneck effect - whilst relocating existing residents to other centres, new arrivals keep the numbers consistently high. This crisis exposes deeper structural problems within the Dutch asylum system, where existing centres operate near full capacity and municipalities provide insufficient emergency accommodation options, creating an unsustainable cycle of overcrowding.