The fall of Bashar al-Assad’s government in Syria and the seizure of Damascus by Islamists means that a massive influx of Syrian migrants to Western Europe is a real possibility. Several European countries have already announced that, as a precautionary measure, they are suspending the examination of current asylum applications. France has been slow to make a decision, prompting concern from the Right about the risks to the country’s security.
The day after the fall of the Bashar al-Assad regime was announced on Monday, December 9th, the Austrian authorities announced that they were suspending asylum applications from refugees from Syria and preparing “a deportation programme.” “From now on, all current procedures will be stopped,” said the ministry of the interior in a press release. 100,000 Syrians are already living in Austria and thousands more have submitted applications and are awaiting a favourable response.
A similar decision has been taken in Germany, where there are over a million Syrian refugees. Asylum applications from Syrians have been suspended for the time being.
The northern European countries of Denmark and Norway have followed Austria and Germany’s lead. The Danish Refugee Appeals Board “has decided to suspend the processing of cases involving people from Syria due to the very uncertain situation in the country following the fall of the Assad regime,” it wrote in a press release. The precautionary measure applies in both directions: no more asylum, but also a pause in deportations. The departure deadline for people eligible for deportation to Syria has been postponed. Norway has reached the same conclusions and prefers to apply the precautionary principle until the situation there has stabilised. “The situation in the country remains very unclear and unresolved,” wrote the Norwegian Directorate of Immigration in a statement reported in the French press.
Finally, Belgium has announced that it too is suspending the processing of asylum applications submitted to it.
France, on the other hand, is dithering on this thorny issue. The question of suspending the processing of asylum applications has been raised at high level, but no decision has been taken, even though the ministry of the interior assures us that a decision will be taken “in the next few hours.”
The director of the French Office for the Protection of Refugees and Stateless Persons (OFPRA) simply recommends “deferring” the examination of the 700 current asylum applications, while declaring that he does not want to “leave people without a response for too long.”
“In France, any Syrian who wants to continue to apply for asylum will be able to do so,” promised Didier Leschi, director of the French Office for Immigration and Integration. He believes that there is no hurry and that France can wait, as it is not traditionally a destination country for Syrian refugees. Henry Masson, president of the CIMADE (Comité inter-mouvements auprès des évacués, Inter-Movement Committee for the Evacuated), is optimistic. “Syria is still a high-risk country,” he argues. “Today, we know nothing about political developments” and “we can’t be sure that there won’t be bloody fratricidal fighting,” he adds. Before tempering his analysis: “there is a non-negligible probability” that many Syrians will want to “return to their country” anyway, if it “is rebuilt peacefully and with respect for all minorities.”
Politically, this is a divisive issue. Sarah Knafo MEP from Reconquête, Éric Zemmour’s party, explained that “Europe should close its doors.” Marine Le Pen, for her part, advocated the return of refugees to their own countries, arguing that people should not remain refugees “all their lives.” The Left, in turn, denounced the “hypocritical and dangerous” discourse of the Right, and a desire to attack the “inalienable right” that is the right of asylum. The only dissonant and lucid voice on the Left is that of communist leader Fabien Roussel, who believes that caution is called for. Suspending asylum is a “precautionary measure, because there are terrorists in Syria today, among those who overthrew the dictator Bashar al-Assad,” he acknowledged.
The resigning government may take some time to reach a decision as, since Michel Barnier’s fall on December 4th, it has been limited to dealing with current affairs in the absence of a new prime minister.
