The dangerous asylum seeker easily captures the public's attention. Policies increasingly focus on strong repercussions for asylum seekers who cause disturbances or can be considered dangerous. This article distinguishes between categories of asylum seekers based on the kind of disturbance or danger they cause in the view of the general public. It is argued that EU law provides a strong basis for denying or withdrawing the residence rights of asylum seekers based on public order considerations. In practice however, it seems difficult to meet the threshold of the public order criteria developed by the Court of Justice.

Since 2007, a statute has been in force in the Netherlands (the Wet inburgering or Act on Civic Integration) that provides for a system of fines that can be imposed on certain classes of immigrants for not passing the ‘civic integration exam’, testing knowledge of Dutch language and culture, by a certain deadline. However, the way in which the statute defines the precise obligations on immigrants, which classes of immigrants have those obligations, what the exact deadline is and when it can be extended leaves much to be desired in terms of legal certainty, especially considering the frequent changes that the legislature of the Netherlands makes to the statute. Morever, since a fine is imposed as a penalty for what is effectively a ‘criminal charge’ (in the sense of article 6 of the European Convention on Human Rights), what role does the establishment in a fair trial of the immigrant’s culpability play in the imposition of such a fine? For a completely different perspective on integration policy, the author discusses the 2015 decision P. and S. of the Court of Justice of the European Union, in which he was the legal representative of the plaintiffs. When an immigrant is a beneficiary of an EU directive providing for immigration rights for third-country nationals, the Court holds that it is permissible to impose fines in order to stimulate the immigrant’s integration in the society of the host member state, but that such a penalty may not go so far as to actively endanger the goal of aiding integration. In general, the Court is highly sceptical of the effectiveness and fairness of the system of fines provided for by the Act on Civic Integration. The author concludes that the Act, with its clear emphasis on punishment rather than promotion of civic integration, ultimately has the effect of criminalising entire classes of immigrants to the Netherlands.

This article deals with the criminal offence of recruiting persons for armed struggle (art. 205 of the Dutch Criminal Code), a provision that nowadays mainly arises in terrorism cases. It revolves around the dilemmas and interpretative questions that this criminal offence has yielded so far – especially since the amendments in 2004 – and examines how the courts have dealt with it.