New research by the Netherlands Court of Audit on the functioning of the Integration Act shows improvements for people with a residence status, but this leads insufficiently to paid work at the appropriate level. The Netherlands still hardly succeeds in getting recognized refugees to work in sectors with major staff shortages, such as construction, healthcare, or technology.
Integration takes longer, the achieved level is lower, and the shortage sectors are hardly reached. Without urgency and adjustment, integration policy remains wishful thinking. Status holders still cannot start quickly, and the supply of language courses can improve. The reasons why participation in society improves slowly are diverse. Slow asylum procedures or the problem of finding a fixed residence play a role. As well as the shortage of language teachers or lack of childcare. Paid work also remains difficult to combine with mandatory language lessons.
Law does not yet contribute to quick and full participation
The current Integration Act has been in effect since 2022. This new research - covering the years 2022 through 2024 and involving nearly 65,000 status holders - shows that refugees with a residence status now receive more guidance from municipalities than under the previous Integration Act. More language education at level B1 is also offered.
However, results up to mid-2025 show that the policy does not sufficiently contribute to what the law also states, namely quick and full participation in Dutch society. There is still a lot of untapped potential, writes the Netherlands Court of Audit on January 28, 2026. Especially in sectors with major staff shortages.
Minister does not know if laws goals are met
The responsible minister and state secretary of Social Affairs and Employment (SZW) cannot, according to the report, currently determine whether the integration policy stimulates ‘full participation’. This is because work experience and education level of status holders are not registered at the start of the integration process. Target values to measure whether national policy achieves its goals are also missing.
Integration policy has existed in the Netherlands since 1998. Integration laws followed each other quickly, often before the effect of the previous law was known. Therefore, the new policy is set up as a ‘learning system’, so that national policy can be quickly adjusted when bottlenecks occur in implementation. The minister makes insufficient use of this. The integration process starts later due to long asylum procedures, on average only after more than 2 years. The Integration Act aims for status holders to achieve ‘the highest possible language level’. But the number of participants following courses at a low language level, and thus having little chance of full participation, is twice as high as expected. Furthermore, the supply of language lessons at B2 level is still low. Enrollment in the so-called education route is half of what was targeted.
Share of employed status holders per sector in 2022 through 2024, measured one year after housing
Flexible contracts, low-paid work
Of the status holders who started their integration process 3 years ago, 28% have had some form of paid work. This often involves low-paid jobs with flexible contracts and not work ‘at level’ where education and work experience from the country of origin are utilized. For example, the nurse works in hospitality and the university computer science lecturer as a rapid delivery courier. To get these people fully and sustainably employed often requires high-level language acquisition and retraining. This conflicts with the requirements of the Participation Act: to leave social assistance as soon as possible.
Compared to some other countries in Europe, it takes a long time in the Netherlands before newcomers can work at level, for example in healthcare. If refugee healthcare workers are retrained more quickly in the Netherlands to become qualified, the government would save on benefits and training costs. The United Kingdom and Germany have arranged this differently, for example. In 2024, 5,800 Syrian refugees worked as doctors in Germany. Some of them moved from the Netherlands to Germany because of the possibility to practice their profession there.
Without choices, policy remains wishful thinking
The Court of Audit calls it wishful thinking when officials expect status holders to work quickly, fully, and paid while simultaneously obtaining their mandatory integration diploma at the highest possible language level. Municipalities, which must manage integration processes and purchase integration courses, cannot solve this problem for the minister of SZW. The officials of SZW state following the Court of Audit research that they also support sustainable exit from social assistance and want to set up target values and registration. In its afterword, the Netherlands Court of Audit writes that the bottlenecks are known. Clear choices are now needed. If the goal of integration is ‘participate to the best of one’s ability’, as the law states, the Court of Audit recommends focusing on the potential of asylum status holders. Without that, sustainable exit from social assistance remains unrealistic and labor potential untapped.