The European Commission continues to withhold information about the secretive meeting last June with a delegation representing the Taliban regime in Afghanistan on the deportation of rejected asylum seekers and those with criminal records.
The meeting took place on 23 June in Brussels at the request of a majority of EU Member States but the Commission has been silent about the outcome of the meeting. Since the Taliban takeover of power in Afghanistan in August 2021, the EU has been engaged in what it calls ‘critical engagement’ with the de-facto Islamist government which the EU does not recognize.
What happened at the meeting was reported for the first time in an article published by The New York Times this week. The information is based on information from both European and Afghan participants who requested anonymity to discuss sensitive negotiations. The spokespersons service of the Commission did not reply immediately to a request for comment.
The meeting was co-hosted by Sweden and the European Commission. Abdul Qahar Balkhi, the spokesman for Afghanistan’s foreign ministry, led the Afghan delegation, accompanied by four officials from the foreign and interior ministries.
The five Taliban officials who had flown into Brussels from Istanbul were escorted by Belgian plainclothes officers in black vans to a Novotel hotel near the international airport, where more than 20 European officials awaited. Fifteen European countries and Norway were represented at the meeting.
The Taliban delegation did not feel welcomed by the EU and boycotted the lunch with the European diplomats. The Taliban officials had a visa only for one day and left in the afternoon, after meeting with their European counterparts for just over five hours.
The two sides discussed how to cooperate on returning Afghans, and the Taliban asked for economic assistance and a stronger diplomatic presence in Europe. The European participants in the meeting never mentioned human rights abuses committed by the Taliban, according to the article.
In a previous interview about the migration crisis in Ceuta, law professor Lena Riemer at the Central European University in Vienna told The Brussels Times that unaccompanied minors are excluded from accelerated asylum and return procedures as in the previous EU Return Directive.
Asked about Afghan asylum seekers in the EU, she referred to the ruling on 4 October 2024 by the Court of Justice of the EU. The court ruled that that systemic discrimination such as that faced by Afghan women under the Taliban's rule amounts to persecution under EU asylum law. Thus, all women should be granted refugee status, which offers them additional protection against return.
The ruling does not apply to Afghan men. But to deport someone to Afghanistan, the EU Member State in question must always carry out an individualized risk assessment, she explains. It first needs to withdraw the protection status, e.g. due to a criminal conviction. If the person in question has no protection status and is deportable, then the individual can be returned in theory.
“The question is if it is indeed safe to return anyone to Afghanistan under the Taliban rule,” she added. “No-one should be deported to Afghanistan given the dire human rights and living situation there. This is a fundamental principle of international refugee law, the non-refoulement principle.”
So far, only some hundreds of convicted Afghan men have been deported but it is a dangerous slippery slope.
“EU countries bend to pressure from the far-right to increase deportation numbers. These countries make themselves vulnerable to blackmail when collaborating with the Taliban. They act hypocritically and undermine efforts by civil society, UN agencies and Afghans themselves fighting for human rights in Afghanistan.”
Afghanistan is not included in EU’s list of safe countries of origin. The EU legal framework provides technical support, but the definitive decision to strip protection status and deport a convicted male person rest entirely within the competence of each individual EU Member State.
According to the country guidance on Afghanistan, issued last June by the EU Asylum Agency for Asylum (EUAA), the Taliban de facto government remains the main actor of persecution and serious harm in the country. In addition, several non-State actors continue to be active.
In light of the current situation, for Afghan women and girls a well-founded fear of persecution would in general be substantiated. Other groups of asylum seekers would also have a well-founded fear of persecution in general and would highly likely qualify for refugee status, according to the guidance note.
In relation to exclusion from refugee status, a crime could fall under the ground of a serious (non-political) crime if committed in Afghanistan or any third country (for example, while the applicant resided in Pakistan or Iran, or in countries of transit, etc.). In relation to subsidiary protection, serious crimes committed by Afghan applicants in the host country may also lead to exclusion.
Update: The article will be updated by the European Council's statement on migration, following its strategic discussion at the summit in Brussels on 15 - 16 October.
