The Netherlands is full, says Wilders, amid immigration boom

The population of the Netherlands officially passed the 18 million mark this week, but the Dutch are not celebrating as the small country struggles with housing and public service shortages amid growing resentment over immigration.
Immigration from other European Union countries, especially Poland as well as war-torn Ukraine and from Syria, is driving a faster rate of population growth, which has nearly doubled in pace in the last eight years.
Geert Wilders, the leader of the anti-immigration Freedom Party, won a shock victory in elections last year on a platform of restricting migrant numbers and opting out of EU asylum policy, which is now the policy of a right-wing coalition government he dominates.
“Eighteen million people on a small piece of land,” he said, in a reference to the high population density of the Netherlands, the highest for a significant country in Europe. “While there is a huge shortage of housing, healthcare, police. Crazy. The Netherlands is full.”
Dutch discontent over high levels of net immigration, including asylum seekers, a housing shortage in the capital and pressure on schools or nurseries tops the political agenda, with Britain increasingly echoing the trend.
In 2016 the Dutch population was 17 million, with the previous increase from 16 million taking 15 years from 2001 rather than eight years to hit the 18 million mark, with the annual number of new inhabitants rising from an average 66,000 people a year in that period to 120,000.
“Since 2015, the population has grown mainly due to foreign migration,” the Dutch central statistics office said on Thursday.
The number of residents of Ukrainian and Syrian origin increased the most in absolute terms between 2016 and 2024, followed by people of Polish origin.
At the beginning of 2024, 0.7 per cent of residents had Ukraine as their country of origin, 0.9 per cent Syria and 1.3 per cent Poland, taking the number of residents not born in the Netherlands to 16 per cent (2.9 million).
The Dutch have changed their tune over increases to the population after a much faster rise in numbers due to a protracted baby boom caused by higher birth rates from the 1950s over the next three decades was largely welcomed.
When the population hit 15 million in 1996, a record celebrating the milestone was number one in the Dutch hit parade.
“Curtains are always open, lunch is a cheese sandwich, the land full of tolerance,” sang Fluitsma and Van Tijn with a video celebrating Dutch life.
The shift from planning over decades to deal with the Dutch baby boom to sudden increases in net migration, due to conflicts and EU enlargement to the east, has given population increases a “different dynamic”.
“We have had a population explosion, one million people have been added in eight years. And we were not well prepared for that,” said Professor Jan Latten, 72, a Dutch demographer who previously compiled national statistics.
Latten noted that increases in net migration were not planned for with new housing, schools, nurseries or other public services, warning that the government needs to get a grip to prevent social conflict.
“When do people get the idea that [the country] is full? When there is scarcity. We are in that process now,” he told the Het Parool newspaper. “Politics must pick that up, so that everyone in the country can get their own share. Otherwise we will fight each other.”