Over one-quarter of those given criminal convictions in Belgium were foreign nationals, data published by the government has revealed.
More than one in four people given criminal convictions in Belgium in 2020 were citizens of another country, data released by the country’s government has shown.
The figures were obtained after a request made by Flemish nationalist party Vlaams Belang, which is now urging the country’s federal government to implement arrangements allowing foreign criminals to serve their sentences abroad.
According to the revealed statistics, just over 45,000 foreign nationals were convicted of criminal offences in the EU nation-state in 2020, representing just over 28 per cent of all convictions in the country.
By contrast, according to the OECD, just under 13 per cent of the country is described as being foreign-born.
“This means that foreign nationals are considerably overrepresented: while they make up ‘only’ 13 per cent of the population, their share in the crime statistics is more than twice as high,” Barbara Pas, the leader of Vlaams Belang’s parliamentary group, said in a statement given to Breitbart Europe.
The senior party official has now called on the country’s government to implement procedures allowing foreign criminals to serve their sentences in their country of origin, something that she says could end up saving the country substantial amounts of money.
“These criminals should serve their sentences in their country of origin as much as possible,” she said. “That would not only provide a solution to the long-standing problem of overcrowding in our prisons, but would also result in significant savings.”
Such a task might be easier said than done for government officials in the country, however, with the state repeatedly struggling to deport failed asylum seekers back home in the past.
For example, a report back in 2019 found that only 6.5 per cent of failed asylum seekers in the country were being returned back home, with reception centres for migrants in the country being put under intense strain due to the large number of arrivals.
The impact such migrant arrivals have had on the country has been substantial, with the country’s capital, Brussels, remaining a hotbed of Islamic terrorist activity to this day.
Earlier this month, police in the country arrested seven “supporters of the IS” who authorities suspect were planning a terror attack.
This follows on from the arrest of another 8 suspected jihadists in Brussels, as well as Antwerp and Eupen, in relation to another alleged terror plot.