The Dutch government says it expects to limit waiting times for asylum seekers already in the system to three years, according to a letter sent by Migration Minister Van den Brink to parliament. The pledge follows a decision to prioritise newly arriving applicants from next week onward, in order to meet deadlines set under the EU Migration Pact — a shift that had raised fears of backlogs stretching eight to ten years for the roughly 50,000 people already in the process. Asylum lawyers and refugee advocacy group VluchtelingenWerk Nederland have sharply criticised the plan, calling the three-year wait "completely unacceptable" and dismissing the minister's proposed efficiency measures — such as categorising cases by approval likelihood — as "tinkering at the margins" unlikely to deliver meaningful results.