General elections in June left the anti-immigrant Freedom Party in third place with 24 parliamentary seats. In late September, after months of negotiations, the Liberal Party and Christian Democrats announced a center-right coalition government resting on Freedom Party support.

In October Freedom Party leader Geert Wilders appeared in court for inciting discrimination and hatred against Muslims, non-Western immigrants, and specifically Moroccans, as well as for group defamation of adherents to Islam. Later that month new judges were appointed following a challenge by Wilders over alleged bias; the case remains pending at this writing.

New rules in July extended the 48 hour accelerated asylum procedure to eight days while making it the default procedure, despite domestic and international criticism that eight days are insufficient for a proper assessment, particularly in complex cases and those involving vulnerable groups. In February the UN Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women criticized Dutch accelerated procedures as unsuitable for women victims of violence and unaccompanied children, and urged the government to recognize formally domestic violence and gender-based persecution as grounds for asylum.

The ECtHR ruled in July that the expulsion to Libya of a Libyan man, acquitted of terrorism charges by a Dutch court in 2003, would violate the ban on returns to risk of torture.

In September, under a new policy announced in July, the government deported a Somali who had been refused asylum to Mogadishu, despite UNHCR guidelines advising against all returns to south-central Somalia.