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Both Germany and Austria have suspended asylum applications from Syria indefinitely following the fall of the country’s Assad regime.
Over the weekend, in the country’s capital of Damascus, the residence of dictator Bashar al-Assad was stormed by al-Qaeda-linked Islamist rebel group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), forcing the country’s former leader to flee the country and claim asylum in Russia, and consequently bringing his 24-year reign to an end.
As the situation unfolds, the Governments in both Berlin and Vienna have declared that they will be suspending asylum applications from Syrians.
According to German broadcaster NTV, a spokesman for Germany’s Federal Office for Migration and Refugees (BAMF) confirmed on Monday that all asylum applications from Syrians are to be suspended until further notice. This, they say, is because the situation unfolding on the ground is “confusing”, making it difficult to process claims from that part of the world.
According to a spokesperson for the Federal Ministry of the Interior, asylum cases are generally processed on a case-by-case basis. However, BAMF has the authority under law to delay processing applications if the situation in the applicant’s country of origin is ambiguous, and Syria now qualifies under this rule given the current turbulence.
While the spokesperson said that claims made by Syrians under the EU’s Dublin Regulation would still apply, other Syrian applicants would no longer be eligible, and 47,000 pending asylum applications from Syrians, including 46,081 first-time applications, will now be suspended.
Meanwhile, neighbouring Austria has also announced that it will be suspending asylum applications from applicants from Syria, which will affect around 7,300 applications. According to Austria’s Interior Minister Gerhard Karner, the country’s family reunification scheme for Syrian migrants will also be suspended indefinitely.
Since ex-German Chancellor Angela Merkel decided to accept significant numbers of refugees into Germany in response to the 2015 Syrian civil war, vast numbers of Syrians came to Europe to claim asylum over the past decade, with 975,000 Syrians currently living in the country, and around 600,000 of these being in the country under some kind of asylum scheme.
However, the United Nations’ World Food Programme (WFP) recently warned that the current instability within the country could lead to a food crisis that would force an additional 1.5 million Syrians to flee their homes, triggering fears in some quarters that Europe may be staring down the barrel of another migrant crisis.
With many European governments under pressure from widespread public dissatisfaction with current asylum policies, a new asylum influx could have a major impact on the course of elections like Germany’s upcoming federal election on February 23rd 2025.
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