Austria’s Interior Ministry says it has accelerated the deportation of Afghan asylum seekers by launching technical talks with Kabul and is preparing more cases for returns.<\/p>\n
According to the ministry, official figures show that about 170 Afghan nationals were deported from Austria in the first six months of 2026 alone. Austrian Interior Minister Gerhard Karner said the hardline policy in this area will continue and that new documents and case files are being prepared for extraditions.<\/p>\n
Vienna officials said that after the events of August 2021 and the Taliban’s takeover, direct deportation flights were halted because diplomatic channels were cut off. However, over the past two years, “technical and operational” contacts between the two sides have been reactivated, and expert meetings have been held in Kabul and Vienna.<\/p>\n
According to details provided by Austria’s Interior Ministry, during these meetings the Kabul delegation confirmed the identities of a number of asylum seekers who had criminal cases and judicial convictions in Austria, a move that, according to Austria, paved the way for the first direct deportation flight in October 2025 via Istanbul.<\/p>\n
The ministry added that in addition to direct deportations, Austria has also transferred more than 200 Afghan asylum seekers to other EU member states under European Union rules.<\/p>\n
Austrian officials stressed that the focus of the programme is on people they describe as “criminals” or whose asylum claims have been rejected and who have no right to stay. They also said asylum seekers who have integrated successfully into Austrian working and social life are not included in the policy.<\/p>\n
The report says that, alongside Austria, Germany has also resumed deportations of Afghan asylum seekers with criminal records to Kabul after years of interruption and says it is pursuing the return of those without residence rights at a faster pace. Published reports also say France has begun low-level technical and diplomatic talks with Kabul to facilitate the return of Afghan nationals, indicating that several European countries, despite not formally recognising the Taliban administration, have turned to operational engagement on migration and security cases.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Austria says it has stepped up deportations of Afghan asylum seekers after technical talks with Kabul and more return cases are being prepared.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":23761,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17,6,16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-23762","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-important-news","category-international","category-secondary-headline"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23762","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23762"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23762\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/23761"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23762"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23762"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23762"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}