Belgium suspends shelter for single male asylum seekers

BRUSSELS (AFP): Single male asylum seekers will no longer be given shelter in Belgium after the government announced a temporary suspension on Tuesday, as the country pointed to a shortage of accommodation.

Belgium faces an acute asylum crisis as the number of people arriving in the country has rapidly risen from last year, putting pressure on an already creaking system.

Announcing the temporary suspension, Secretary of State for Asylum and Migration Nicole de Moor said Belgium expected “a growing influx of families and children” seeking shelter.

“In recent days, the number of families with children seeking asylum has increased sharply,” said de Moor, a Flemish Christian democrat.

“I want to completely avoid children ending up on the streets in winter,” she added.

She did not say how long the suspension by the Fedasil network — the federal agency in charge of asylum seekers — would last.

De Moor also pointed to what Belgium believes to be the unequal burden-sharing of migrants in the European Union.

“Our country has been doing more than its fair share for a long time. This cannot go on any longer, because this year, 19,000 asylum seekers registered in Belgium, compared with 1,500 in Portugal, a country that has a similar population to Belgium,” she said.

De Moor also pointed to Sweden as another country that registered “very few asylum applications” and said the migratory pressure on Europe had risen overall this year.

In early June, EU countries reached agreement on a long-stalled revision of Brussels’ asylum rules that aims to share the burden of hosting asylum seekers across the bloc, with those refusing to do so having to pay money to the ones that do.

But its adoption is still being hotly debated between member states, and the deal also needs buy-in from the European Parliament.