Cabinet invests millions in migration deals

NETHERLANDS, May 23 - News item | 23-05-2025 | 17:00

This government has high ambitions to tackle irregular migration and promote migrants' return. The aim is to establish strategic partnerships with migration countries. This involves working together to prevent people smuggling, make return arrangements, strengthen border control and develop new concepts, such as return hubs.

When entering into partnerships, the Netherlands pays attention to partner countries' interests on issues such as trade, aid, political support and deployment of Dutch expertise on food security, water management and health. In this way, the government is working on an agenda of broad shared interests, including Dutch migration interests.

In doing so, the government will always carefully weigh up the promotion and protection of human rights in relation to migration policy and will monitor whether programmes funded by the Netherlands are effective. Besides its own efforts, the Netherlands is also a driver of strategic partnerships in the European context, and actively seeks cooperation with the European Commission or other member states.

Minister Faber: "Tackling illegal migration is a top priority for me. We will be investing in those countries in order to prevent people from crossing over to Europe. We all see that the cost to society is much higher once migrants are here. This is why I think this investment is fully justified." 

Minister Klever: "We are building a broad agenda of cooperation. The Netherlands has a lot of expertise in areas such as water, food security and health, both in the public sector and in the business world, and this expertise is in high demand in the countries we want to work with to manage migration.''