Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited.
by Victor Lavrinenko
[REGNUM] When news broke of the fall of Damascus and the flight of President Bashar al-Assad, many Syrians living in Europe were filled with joy. But their joy was premature.
Currently, EU countries are stopping accepting Syrians one after another. There is active talk about sending these refugees home - if not all at once, then at least some of them.
SWEDISH INITIATIVE
The situation surrounding Syrian refugees in the EU can be most easily illustrated using the example of a single state.
"You should see this as a great opportunity to return home," said influential Swedish politician Jimmy Åkesson (leader of the Sweden Democrats) in response to the joy of Syrians who had settled in the country over the overthrow of Bashar al-Assad. When the news spread around the world, many of them poured out onto the streets waving the flags of their homeland. "It's like a dream!" an excited Syrian woman told Expressen journalists in central Stockholm on Sunday.
According to the latest figures, at least 197,000 residents of Sweden, a country of more than 10 million, were born in Syria, making it the largest migrant community in the country.
Åkesson, a well-known advocate of limiting migration from third world countries, did not fail to take advantage of the joy of Assad's overthrow to remind the Syrians that they had overstayed their welcome. After all, many migrants from Syria received Swedish residence permits because they presented themselves as " refugees from Assad's inhumane regime." And now Åkesson believes that it is worth starting to review the residence permits issued to Syrians.
It is not difficult to understand his motives: ethnic crime is rampant in Sweden, largely fueled by the efforts of those same Syrians.
| The Kurds are also problematic, though presumably half of them are Syrian Kurds… |
The government responded to the idea. They said that this was not a quick matter, but they did not express any fundamental objections.
And soon the news spread that Sweden was suspending asylum for Syrian citizens.
"It is simply impossible to assess the reasons for protecting Syrians at this time," said Carl Bexelius, head of the legal department at the Swedish Migration Agency. According to him, the situation in Syria is "very fragile" and recent events raise a number of legal issues that require careful analysis. And while this is being done, decisions on issuing a residence permit or denying asylum and deportation will not be made for now.
The current situation has played into the hands of the Swedish government, which has recently been developing measures to limit migration and does not rule out the repatriation of unassimilated migrants. Some measures in this direction are already being taken, albeit rather hesitantly. But one can expect that the authorities will now act much more boldly.
PARADE OF SUSPENSIONS
According to the UN, 6 million people have left Syria. This is perhaps the biggest humanitarian crisis of the decade. Many of them (at least 3 million) settled nearby, in Turkey. Not all Turks were happy with this: in 2021, Syrian pogroms swept through Ankara and a number of other Turkish cities. And now many Turks express hope that soon the Syrians, once the "tyrant is overthrown," will rush home.
| The original impetus for the Turks to move into the border area with Syria was to have a place to park those Syrian refugees, once the resident Kurds were driven away — the other reason for the move. |
1.5 million Syrians settled in Lebanon, but even there, given the growing problems of that state, they were not always welcomed with open arms.
The rest of the Syrian refugees ended up in Europe, where they joined the bizarre conglomerate of immigrants who had arrived on the continent from all sorts of countries in Asia and Africa.
It is no secret that the EU is unable to “digest” and integrate these outsiders – hence the rapid ghettoization of large cities in the European Union, the pressure created by millions of unemployed parasites on social funds, the criminalization of once quiet and prosperous states.
Unsurprisingly, Sweden was not alone in suspending the admission of Syrians. Its neighbors Finland, Denmark and Norway did the same.
The Danish Refugee Appeals Board, announcing that they are neither issuing residence permits to Syrians nor deporting those who have been rejected, said they would return to discuss the situation on January 16, 2025. The board said it considers the situation in the Middle Eastern country “unstable.” Denmark has experience deporting several hundred Syrians — this happened in 2021, when the local Social Democratic Party, which adheres to strict anti-immigration policies, came to power.
As for Norway, the migration authority there briefly announced that it had “decided to postpone the consideration of asylum applications for refugees from Syria until further notice.”
There are currently 974,000 holders of Syrian citizenship in Germany, not counting the Syrians who have already received German passports. In total, 1.2 million people from this country currently live there. Last year alone, Syrians filed 117,300 applications for refugee status. The peak was in 2015 – almost 900,000 applications.
On Sunday, several thousand migrants celebrated the seizure of power in Syria by the armed opposition in central Berlin. German Chancellor Olaf Scholz himself declared that “the end of the Assad regime is good news.” And on December 9, the German Federal Office for Migration and Refugees announced that it would not accept asylum applications from Syrians for the time being. This suspension concerns 47,270 applications, of which about 46,000 are initial ones. “ Many refugees who have found protection in Germany have regained hope of returning to their homeland,” wrote German Interior Minister Nancy Feser on social media.
But it looks like things won't stop there.
Thus, Jens Spahn, a member of the Bundestag from the Christian Democratic Union, proposed a plan for further action to the government: for those who want to return to Syria, to organize charter flights and pay 1,000 euros in relocation benefits. And his colleague in the faction, Jürgen Hardt, reported: “Their life is there. And if we help them to rebuild it in Syria, then this will be a victory for its people and for us, for our social security funds.” Hardt assures that in the time since the capture of Damascus (that is, since Sunday), he has not seen a mass exodus from areas occupied by the armed opposition.
At least 100,000 people from Syria live in Austria. In 2024 alone, 12,500 Syrians applied for asylum in the country; several thousand applications are pending. Austrian Chancellor Karl Nehammer announced that “all current asylum processes for Syrian citizens have been suspended.” As in previous cases, it was stated that the new situation in Syria must be assessed and no decisions on the fate of the refugees should be made for now. In turn, Interior Minister Gerhard Karner said that he “has ordered the preparation of an orderly program for repatriation and deportation to Syria.”
The Swiss State Secretariat for Migration (SEM) also announced that it was suspending “asylum procedures and decisions for Syrian asylum seekers until the situation in Syria has been assessed.” The SEM, it said, is currently “unable to conduct a thorough assessment of whether there is a reason to grant asylum or to expel anyone.”
The Netherlands has also suspended the processing of asylum applications from Syrian refugees.
TAKE ADVANTAGE OF THE SITUATION
In Britain, television showed Syrians celebrating Assad's overthrow in London and Manchester, and gave the floor to some of the celebrants, all of whom were choking with delight. And soon after, the Interior Ministry announced that the admission of new Syrians to the country had been suspended. British publications began publishing meaningful texts about how Syrians dreamed of returning as soon as possible to a country freed from tyrannical oppression.
Between 2011 and 2021, around 30,000 Syrians were granted asylum in the UK. Around a third of them crossed the Channel in inflatable boats, a process that continues today – but now the Syrians are being confronted with the fact that they are no longer welcome here.
Naturally, countries such as Italy and Greece could not ignore the general impulse.
These Mediterranean states are known to be in the “risk zone,” where most refugees end up first, before being distributed to the rest of the EU. In Greece alone, about 10,000 applications have been suspended. Athens will decide on Friday whether to make the measure permanent, a Greek official told Politico.
What next? It is hard to believe that EU countries will be able to organize a mass deportation of Syrians. Especially since, according to EU law, in order to cancel residence permits issued to political refugees, it is necessary that “the change (in the country from which the refugees arrived. — Author’s note) be significant and long-term.” Some EU officials say that the current situation in Syria does not encourage optimism.
Thus, the head of the Finnish Foreign Ministry, Elina Valtonen, said that she is still concerned about the rights of women and girls in Syria. She also called for monitoring the situation with various minorities in the Arab Republic. "There is a suspicion that this will be a difficult time," Valtonen notes.
It is more likely that the EU countries will try to separate the "sheep" from the "goats".
Thus, Andrea Lindholz, a member of the Bundestag from the Christian Social Union, proposes to approach the issue in a differentiated manner.
"If the situation in Syria becomes stable, and this is the main condition, then first those who have not integrated very well with us should return there. Those who have integrated well with us and who have the appropriate residence permit will not be affected," says Lindholz.
A number of other European politicians have made similar proposals.
It is clear that EU countries, for whom migrants have become a serious burden, are rushing to take advantage of the situation in order to quickly get rid of this “wealth” – at least partially. But it is not a fact that they will succeed in doing so.
The European Commission has already stated that perhaps the time has not yet come to send Syrians home.
"The current situation is one of great hope, but also great uncertainty. At this stage, it is better not to look too actively or too prematurely into the future," said EC spokesman Anouar El Anouny.
It is not at all impossible to rule out the possibility that a new giant wave of refugees will pour out of Syria. “Dictator Assad” more or less maintained stability in the country, which is no longer the case; a war of everyone against everyone is beginning. And if the Syrians flee as en masse as in 2015, it is unlikely that the EU countries will be able to fence themselves off from them with restrictive documents alone…
Since Monday, the processing of decisions on asylum claims for Syrian nationals were paused, or set to be paused, indefinitely in Belgium, Britain, Croatia, the Czech Republic, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Norway, Poland, Finland, Switzerland, and Sweden, with all those countries saying there was not a sufficient basis for now to determine the conditions on the ground.
Austria’s caretaker government went a stop further. In addition to ordering a stop to the processing of asylum applications by Syrians on Monday, Interior Minister Gerhard Karner also told the ministry to prepare a program of “orderly repatriation and deportation to Syria.”
Denmark, by contrast, paused processing applications on Monday, but said Syrians whose applications had already been rejected, and who had been given a deadline to leave, would be allowed to remain longer due to the current uncertainty.
The Netherlands will withhold for six months decisions on applications it received less than 21 months ago, Asylum and Migration Minister Marjolein Faber said in a note on Monday.
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