Contacts with the Taliban, who rule Afghanistan, have been going on since at least August 2021, when the EU announced it would reach out to the group to help protect women and girls, after they took over the country. The Taliban have issued around 100 decrees, including bans on education
Nikolaj Nielsen
The European Commission has declined to confirm whether Taliban representatives will travel to Brussels for talks on deportations to Afghanistan.
Following recent media reports suggesting a possible meeting later this summer, Markus Lammert, commission spokesperson said only that “contacts at technical level are ongoing.”
Speaking to reporters on Monday (27 April), Lammert said such contacts do not amount to the diplomatic recognition of the Taliban, a militant outfit that has stripped women of their rights and carries out widespread abuses.
Such contacts have been going on since at least August 2021, when the EU announced it would reach out to the Taliban to help protect women and girls after they took over the country.
Since then, those rights have sharply deteriorated. The Taliban have issued around 100 decrees, including bans on education and other measures that effectively silence women.
Last August, the UN said the Taliban were closer than ever to achieving their vision of a society that completely erases women from public life.
The European Court of Justice has also ruled that Afghan women can be recognised as refugees solely on the basis of their gender and nationality
without requiring any other justifications.
But the EU’s attention has since shifted into deporting Afghan nationals in Europe convicted of committing a crime, as part of a wider politically-charged initiative to crack down on asylum.
Some 20 EU interior ministers last October demanded the commission to coordinate contacts with the Taliban on returns for those Afghan nationals with no right to remain in Europe.
“This is what the commission is now following up on,” said Lammert.
In January, Johannes Luchner, a senior European Commission official in the home affairs department, travelled to Kabul alongside Belgium’s migration minister, Anneleen Van Bossuyt.
Speaking to European lawmakers at a hearing the same month, Luchner said the EU was not engaging with the Taliban on legal migration.
“Our first interest is the return of criminals,” he said, adding that there is also “an increasing number of non-criminal Afghans” subject to return orders.
Last year, Germany revoked resettlement pledges for Afghans in Pakistan, leading to a criminal complaint against Germany’s interior and foreign ministers.
And in February, Germany deported 20 Afghans with criminal convictions from Leipzig to Kabul on a charter flight amid similar efforts by Austria and Denmark.
But efforts to deport Afghans with no criminal convictions are also unfolding.
Last month, the Strasbourg-based European Court of Human Rights ruled against Sweden’s attempt to deport an Afghan man of Hazara ethnicity.
The court cited both the risks linked to his ethnic background, which is persecuted by the Taliban, and his “westernisation” during a 10-year stay in Sweden.
More Afghans filed asylum claims in the EU last year than any other nationality, representing some 14 percent of total applications, followed by Venezuelans (11 percent) and Syrians (five percent).
