The European Commission has confirmed initial technical contact with the Taliban administration in Kabul with the aim of facilitating the return of rejected Afghan asylum seekers.<\/p>\n
Speaking at a press conference in Brussels on Monday, October 20, European Commission spokesperson Markus Lammer said that technical-level cooperation between the Taliban authorities and representatives of European countries began earlier this year. He stated that the purpose of these discussions is to coordinate among EU member states.<\/p>\n
This decision comes after 20 EU member states, led by Belgium, called for a strategy to repatriate individuals whose asylum applications have been denied in Europe. These returns include both voluntary and, in some cases, forced deportations.<\/p>\n
Belgian Migration Minister Annelies Verlinden warned that the inability to deport illegal Afghan migrants \u2014 even after court rulings \u2014 would undermine public confidence in Europe’s asylum system and pose a threat to the collective security of EU countries.<\/p>\n
Alongside Belgium, the initiative is supported by Germany, Austria, Greece, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, and Sweden \u2014 countries that have recently seen a rise in anti-immigration sentiment and the growing influence of far-right parties.<\/p>\n
Swedish Migration Minister Johan Forssell told Agence France-Presse that EU countries should accelerate returns by sharing resources, including joint aircraft. According to him, EU delegations have also traveled to Kabul for technical negotiations.<\/p>\n
While acknowledging contact with the Taliban, the EU emphasized that such interactions do not confer legitimacy on the group and are strictly limited to technical and humanitarian cooperation. The European Union also expressed concern over human rights in Afghanistan, particularly regarding women’s rights to education and work.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The EU confirms technical talks with the Taliban to aid the deportation of rejected Afghan asylum seekers, stressing no legitimacy is granted to the Taliban.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":954,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-955","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-important-news","category-international"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/955","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=955"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/955\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/954"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=955"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=955"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=955"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}