It is "necessary and urgent" to begin talks over whether a bloc-wide ban on repatriations to Syria and Afghanistan should be reconsidered, Austria’s Interior Minister Gerhard Karner told a delegation of EU Interior Ministers in Brussels on Monday (March 4)

"Currently, we are not able to repatriate anyone to countries like Syria or Afghanistan, as it would be against EU law," Karner said, explaining this should be reexamined "in the medium-term."

"In Austria, these two countries account for about three-quarters of all asylum applications," he said, adding that the same is true for most other EU countries.

Karner is a member of the Christian democrat and liberal-conservative ÖVP (Austrian People’s Party). 

Bloc members should discuss which regions in Afghanistan and Syria could potentially be considered safe enough to repatriate those who have been refused asylum, Karner said.

In June last year, EU Foreign Affairs Commissioner Josep Borrell confirmed that "the conditions for the repatriation of Syrian refugees, as defined by UNHCR, are currently not fulfilled."

He said the bloc would not support state-backed returns to Syria "unless there are credible guarantees that those returns are voluntary and monitored by the international community,"

"In all my discussions with relevant partners, I have raised the question of forced returns and have been assured that refugees will not be forcibly returned to Syria until these conditions are met," he said.

Which regions should be considered safe?

In most countries across the bloc, those who have committed crimes are often subject to repatriation orders. However, if a country has been declared unsafe, the repatriation cannot take place, even if an order is issued.

In Germany for instance, some reports were published in March 2023 noting the government was "considering" allowing the deportations of serious criminals back to Afghanistan, a country which, under current orders, people cannot be forcibly deported to.

Despite those reports, deportations have not resumed.

According to Karner, the region around Damascus in Syria should be considered "safe." However, when he was asked by journalists for an equivalent region, area or town in Afghanistan, he couldn’t name a particular zone, reported EPD.

The possibility of increasing the number of repatriations was also raised by the Cypriot Interior Minister at the same meeting in Brussels, reported the news agency Associated Press (AP). Counterparts from Greece and Sweden also agreed the issue needed a closer look.

New statistics show that the EU's repatriation rate rose by 15% in 2023, confirmed EU Commissioner for Home Affairs and Migration Ylva Johansson.

Repatriations rose in 2023

Johansson said the rise was the result of "better cooperation between member states."

She said bloc members has started using the so-called Schengen Information System, which allows other states to see if a notice to leave the EU had been issued for an individual, even if they moved states.

The system, explained Johansson, should allow for any EU member state to carry out the repatriation once it has been issued.

So, if Germany issues a notice to leave and the person is later found in France, they can be sent directly back to their home country from there. The Schengen Information System was launched in March 2023, reported EPD.

Headline news

Back in Austria, a case of alleged group rape of a 12-year-old girl thought to have been carried out by a group of migrants is currently making headlines. Karner didn’t mention the topic in his remarks in Brussels on Monday,

This is not the first time migrants have been accused of and even found guilty of rape and murder in the country. In 2022, three Afghans were found guilty of raping and murdering a 13-year-old, also in the Austrian capital Vienna.

In the current case, according to a report published March 5 in the German tabloid newspaper Bild, a 12-year-old girl named Mia* has accused a group of 17 youths reportedly from Syria, Bulgaria, Turkey and Italy of forcing her to have sex with them regularly.

According to a report in the Austrian paper Kleiner Zeitung, police carried out raids at some of the suspects' homes last Thursday after reports suggested that some group members may have filmed the rape to blackmail the girl. Suspects range in age from 13 to 18, reports Kleiner Zeitung.

It is not clear from newspaper reports whether the suspects recently migrated to Austria or merely have family roots in the countries listed.

Migration plays an important role in Austrian society and politics

Migration has long been a key issue in Austrian politics. It has played a pivotal role in the country's makeup since the fall of the Austro-Hungarian empire, which spanned across much of eastern Europe and the Balkans.

Austria, like many other Western European states, will rely "exclusively on immigration" for its future population growth, according to a November 2023 German government BPB (Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung – Government portal for political education) report.

In 2020, the annual number of births in the country fell below the number of deaths, producing a so-called "birth deficit."

Migrants currently make up 13.2% of Austria's resident population, the report said.

*Not her real name, used by Bild to protect her identity

With EPD and AP