Why EU countries are freezing Syrian asylum applications

Good morning. A scoop to start: EU regulators have demanded information about a secret advertising partnership between Google and Meta targeting minors, raising the prospect of a formal investigation.

Today, Laura analyses the decision by a number of European countries to suspend Syrian asylum applications, and our economy correspondent assesses UK chancellor Rachel Reeves’ meeting with Eurozone finance ministers yesterday.

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In limbo

Germany and other European countries yesterday announced they would pause the processing of asylum claims from Syrians, after the government, which many of them had fled from, was toppled.

But not everyone is convinced that regime change led by an EU-designated terror group will make Syria safe again, writes Laura Dubois.

Context: Syrian rebels led by the Islamist group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) on Sunday ended president Bashar al-Assad’s brutal rule. Syrian refugees across Europe celebrated the regime change, waving flags of the Syrian revolution.

Germany yesterday said it would temporarily stop processing asylum claims from Syrians while the situation on the ground became clearer, prompting similar moves in other EU countries including France and Italy.

The move is particularly significant in Germany, which hosts the vast majority of the more than 1mn Syrian refugees living in Europe. More than 47,000 additional asylum claims were put on hold by Berlin.

Austria’s interior ministry said it would review claims already granted, and interior minister Gerhard Karner said he had “instructed the ministry to prepare an orderly repatriation and deportation programme to Syria”.

But there are also some who believe that regime change will lead to more people fleeing the region. EU capitals that suspended asylum claims did not simultaneously call for HTS to stop being listed as a terrorist group.

“We may pay the consequences of the Islamists’ takeover of Syria with significant migratory flows,” French far-right politician Jordan Bardella said.

European Commission officials and the UN refugee agency UNHCR cautioned that it was too soon to tell how the situation on the ground would unfold. “It all depends on a peaceful transition, respecting the lives and aspirations of all Syrians,” UNHCR chief Filippo Grandi wrote.

A commission spokesperson stressed that while many Syrians wanted to return home, “the current situation is one of great hope but also of great uncertainty”.

Migration organisations have criticised the pause on processing asylum claims.

“The developments are generating a rush to return people before the country is actually safe,” said Catherine Woollard of the European Council on Refugees and Exiles, calling the announcements “premature”. She said that changes on the ground should be “significant and non-temporary before protection can be revoked”.

Meanwhile, some are already on the move. In Turkey and Lebanon, the two countries hosting the world’s largest populations of Syrian refugees, people began queueing up at border crossings in the hope of returning home.

Chart du jour: Centre-right rising

Germany’s centre-right Christian Democratic Union and its Christian Social Union sister party are rising in the polls ahead of February’s election.

Warming up

EU finance ministers are interested in a reset with their UK counterpart — if it’s mutually beneficial, writes Paola Tamma.

Context: Sir Keir Starmer’s government has been trying to “reset” relations with the EU following Brexit, but few concrete initiatives have so far been proposed. Starmer has ruled out re-entering the bloc’s single market.

Yesterday, Rachel Reeves met her EU counterparts in Brussels — the first time a chancellor of the exchequer has done so since Brexit — to “rebuild those bonds of trust that have been fractured”, Reeves said.

Her pitch was that the UK’s financial services industry can help the EU grow at a time when it is in dire need of cash to finance everything from a greener economy to defence.

“The whole of the European Union benefits from the deep and liquid capital markets that we have in the UK,” Reeves said after the meeting, in which she called for the EU to drop “unnecessary” trade barriers with the UK.

Feedback from her EU colleagues was friendly, but dry at best.

Eurogroup president Paschal Donohoe said that Reeves got a “very warm response”, but added that “today was not a negotiation. That negotiation will follow”.

“We need to sit around the table on what would be the next steps towards getting back as much as possible to where we were [before Brexit] in terms of financial, economic and trade ties,” said Spanish finance minister Carlos Cuerpo, naming agricultural trade, fisheries and migration as possible areas of co-operation, alongside higher education.

“We’re not renegotiating Brexit but it’s good that she takes the initiative to look for close co-operation,” said Eelco Heinen, the Dutch finance minister.

What to watch today

1. EU economy and finance ministers meet in Brussels.

2. German Chancellor Olaf Scholz hosts Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić in Freiberg in Saxony.

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