THE HAGUE, 07/02/04 - Anyone from outside the EU who wants to immigrate to the Netherlands must first have a basic knowledge of Dutch society and the language, under a bill the government agreed on Friday.

The immigrant must learn the basics of the Dutch language and society in his or her home country and pass a test in order to be admitted to the Netherlands. The measure is meant specifically for people wanting to come over to marry or for reunification with family members, mostly Turks and Moroccans. The criteria and difficulty of the test have yet to be established. A commission will advise on this shortly.

The government also decided on Friday to open up the market for integration courses for foreigners already in the Netherlands since 1998. For them, integration courses are compulsory, whereas they are voluntary for people who arrived before 1998. The so-called Regional Training Centres (ROCs) currently have a monopoly on offering the courses. Local authorities will however be allowed to contract out the integration projects to other organisations.

In addition, the cabinet decided to give a one-off financial injection to municipalities that have insufficient reserves to offer integration courses. For 2004, the national sum budgeted for the courses amounts to 165 million euros.