Will Europe send Syrians back?

Governments across Europe have started to consider whether Syrians could be returned home just days after the fall of the Assad regime.

Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands and the UK are among the European countries which have already “paused” Syrian asylum applications.

This morning, the Austrian Chancellor not only announced a suspension of asylum procedures for Syrian refugees in Austria, but also offered to “support everyone who wants to return to their homeland”. Austria is home to around 95,000 Syrian nationals out of a population of more than nine million.

The UN has cautioned European governments from moving too quickly whilst the situation on the ground in Syria remains unstable. The British Foreign Office describes security conditions in Syria as “unpredictable”.

“The humanitarian situation is disastrous. The economy has collapsed,” the UN’s Special Envoy for Syria, Geir Pedersen, warned in a press conference this morning.

Since civil war broke out in 2011, millions of Syrians have fled abroad. Most of those – an estimated 5.5 million – are in neighbouring countries, including Turkey, Lebanon and Jordan. More than a million are living in Europe, including 850,000 in Germany.

Before the sudden and dramatic collapse of the Assad regime this week, Syrians were the largest group of asylum seekers arriving in the EU at the rate of more than 10,000 per month.

The EU had begun considering whether part of Syria could be declared safe with a view to eventually returning Syrians there. But this would have meant making an agreement with President Assad. His regime had been under EU sanctions since May 2011.

In October of this year, a group of member states including Austria, Italy and the Czech Republic ignited a discussion within the EU as to whether Syria could be reclassified from no-go. EU leaders subsequently decided to park it, concluding that there was a “need to achieve conditions for safe, voluntary and dignified returns of Syrian refugees”.

But under pressure to cut migration numbers, several European countries have now jumped on the possibility that Syrians might return home.

And that’s despite the fact that the Syrian rebel group, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, is one of several currently classed as a terrorism organisation by the EU.

The situation is changing quickly.

This morning a Syrian rebel flag was spotted flying outside the Syrian embassy in Paris. President Macron, along with Germany’s Chancellor Olaf Scholz, agreed last night that they are “ready to work with the new rulers” of Syria. Even though it is far from clear who that is.

Whilst Hayat Tahrir al-Sham led the astonishingly fast advance to the capital, Damascus, there are other rebel groups in control in other parts of the country.

“For now, much of what some call ‘rebel-controlled Syria’, is under the control of a patchwork of groups,” said Geir Pedersen.

The war in Syria may not yet be over.

On Thursday, EU interior ministers are due to meet in Brussels with migration on the agenda. The latest developments in Syria will be on everybody’s lips.

A European Commission spokesperson said that the EU stands by the principle that returning migrants to Syria must be on the basis that UNHCR conditions are met, “requiring a safe dignified return to the country, and that has not really changed”.