The old policy
in the old policy, which applied until the end of 2015, it was possible to invoke the hardship clause if they wanted to qualify for an exemption from the obligation to integrate. Before that was the alien to prove that there was a "manifest unfairness nature. The clause was included in the law in 2011, after the National Ombudsman in a report had criticized the rigid application of the integration requirement. A successful appeal to the hardship clause was one which exemption from the civic integration examination filed to show that there was a combination of very special individual circumstances, so it was not reasonably possible to pass the exam. In other words, there must be a situation where the circumstances jointly reached the threshold of the 'unfairness of overriding nature.
That this was not easy, the figures show: an appeal to the hardship clause was refused in about half of cases. Besides the hardship is also the possibility of exemption for medical reasons (for example because of serious mental or physical problems), but this option was rarely used