The UK and other European countries have said they will suspend the processing of asylum applications from Syrians after the fall of the Assad regime in Damascus, with Austria already preparing a “repatriation and deportation” programme to the country.
In London, a Home Office spokesperson said it had “temporarily paused decisions on Syrian asylum claims whilst we assess the current situation”.
“We keep all country guidance relating to asylum claims under constant review so we can respond to emerging issues,” the spokesperson added.
The moves come despite a lack of clarity over what lies ahead for Syria, one day after rebel forces seized the capital and the president fled to Russia.
Among the first in Europe to react was Germany, home to Europe’s largest Syrian diaspora after taking in nearly a million Syrians fleeing the country’s devastating war.
Germany’s interior minister, Nancy Faeser, said on Monday in a statement that the end of Assad’s “brutal tyranny” had come as a great relief to many. “Many refugees who have found protection in Germany now finally have hope of returning to their Syrian homeland and rebuilding their country.”
She said, however, that the “the situation in Syria is currently very unclear”, citing the “volatile situation” as to why the country’s federal office for migration and refugees had imposed a freeze on decisions for asylum procedures. More than 47,000 asylum applications from Syrians are pending.
Countries across Europe swiftly followed suit, even as questions continued to swirl over what comes next for Syria.
The Swedish migration agency said it would pause all decisions on Syrian asylum requests and deportations. The French government said it was also considering suspending current asylum cases and would make a decision in the coming hours.
Greece had also paused about 9,000 applications for Syrians seeking asylum, a government source told Reuters, while, Finland, Norway, Italy, the Netherlands and Belgium had reportedly taken similar measures.
In Austria, the caretaker government went further, saying it had ordered a halt to the processing of asylum applications from Syrians and a review of all the cases in which asylum had been granted. Syrians rank as the largest group of asylum seekers in the country, with 12,871 applications lodged as of November this year.
The country’s interior minister, Gerhard Karner, added: “I have instructed the ministry to prepare a programme of orderly repatriation and deportation to Syria.” He did not provide further details.
On Monday, the head of the UN’s refugee agency urged countries to wait and see what would happen next in Syria. “Patience and vigilance will be necessary, hoping that developments on the ground will evolve in a positive manner, allowing voluntary, safe and sustainable returns to finally occur – with refugees able to make informed decisions,” Filippo Grandi said in a statement.
A spokesperson for Germany’s federal office for migration and refugees said in an email that it was too soon to predict “whether the current developments will lead to refugee movements in or out of the region” and what impact it would have on the “chances of Syrian refugees to return to their home country”.
Even so, some in Germany were quick to suggest that Syrians could now return home. Jens Spahn of the centre-right Christian Democrats (CDU) suggested that Berlin charter flights to Syria and offer €1,000 (£830) to “anyone who wants to return to Syria”.
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The stance was echoed by the far-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD). “Anyone in Germany who celebrates ‘free Syria’ evidently no longer has any reason to flee,” wrote the AfD’s Alice Weidel on X. “They should return to Syria immediately.”
The CDU legislator Thorsten Frei suggested that rejected Syrian asylum seekers should now lose so-called subsidiary protection. “If the reason for protection no longer applies, then refugees will have to return to their home country,” he told Welt TV.
Others, including members of the chancellor, Olaf Scholz’s Social Democrats (SPD), criticised the debate as inappropriate.
“To talk about a freeze of admission of Syrian refugees at this point … is populist and irresponsible,” the vice-chair of the SPD parliamentary group Dirk Wiese told the Rheinische Post daily.
The German refugee rights advocacy group Pro Asyl condemned the discussion, pointing to the catastrophic conditions on the ground.
“Chaos and violence continue to reign in Syria. Armed groups control large parts of the country and there is neither a stable government nor functioning state structures,” its spokesperson Tareq Alaows said in an email. “Much of the infrastructure has been destroyed and millions of people inside Syria are still displaced. Many cities are considered unsafe and there is no sign of a normalisation of living conditions.”
He described it as “irresponsible” to force people seeking protection into a situation that would once again put their lives in danger. “The demand for return is not only a disregard for international protection obligations,” he added. “But also a sign of a lack of empathy towards people who have already experienced unimaginable suffering.”