The European Union is pushing ahead with plans to deport Afghans with no right to stay in the bloc back to their country, raising practical challenges and concerns from the UN refugee agency.
Under pressure from member states to crack down on irregular migration, Brussels has initiated contacts with the Taliban government in Kabul to assess the feasibility of returns.
EU officials carried out two “technical missions” to the country — the latest in January — to “explore the structuring of the work on readmission and possible organisation of return operations,” Markus Lammert, a European Commission spokesman, said this week.
Returns would have been unthinkable only a few years ago and are fraught with legal and ethical concerns. Human Rights Watch this week warned the Taliban authorities “increased their repression” last year, citing new rules curbing media freedom and restrictions on women and girls.
But the issue of returns is now being pushed by a majority of the EU’s 27 nations following a souring of public opinion on migration that has fuelled right-wing electoral gains across the bloc.
“There has been a shift… where there’s much more talk about this,” said Arafat Jamal, the United Nations refugee agency’s representative in Afghanistan.
“It is extremely worrying because it seems like a policy based on emotion and reaction, but not on actual wisdom.”
Stepping up deportations has become a common refrain among EU nations, as fewer than 20 percent of people ordered to leave the bloc are currently returned to their country of origin, according to official data.
EU countries received about a million asylum applications filed by Afghans between 2013 and 2024, according to the bloc’s data agency. About half as many were approved over the same period.
In 2025, Afghans represented the largest group of applicants, followed by Venezuelans and Syrians.
Italy, Poland and Sweden are among 20 EU countries that backed Belgium in October in urging the commission to enable voluntary and forced returns of those whose applications were rejected, with some lamenting that even convicted criminals could not be expelled.
Freddy Roosemont, director general of the Belgian Immigration Office, told AFP his government was “currently working” with the EU executive and like-minded partners “to find a solution to this problem”.
Meanwhile some have pushed ahead.
Germany has deported more than 100 Afghans since 2024, via charter flights facilitated by Qatar.
Attitudes in the country have been hardened by a string of deadly attacks by Afghans in recent years, including a car-ramming in Munich last year and a 2024 stabbing spree in Mannheim.
Austria has followed, deporting the first Afghan man since 2021 in October.
Others, like France, have aired reservations.
Returns to Afghanistan “pose challenges”, admitted Lammert.
The country is in the midst of a humanitarian crisis, compounded by drought and huge cuts in foreign aid, rights groups say.
Generations of Afghans who fled to neighbouring Pakistan and Iran over decades of successive wars are being forcibly pushed back.
More than five million Afghans have returned since 2023 and, often unable to find jobs, most live in poverty.
Talking to the Taliban authorities to arrange returns poses challenges of its own.
European governments shut their embassies in Kabul when the Taliban authorities returned to power in 2021 and imposed their strict interpretation of Islamic law.
The EU has maintained a diplomatic presence in the country but contacts have been limited to certain areas and Brussels has stressed that the engagement “does not bestow any legitimacy” on the Taliban government.
Conversely, the Taliban authorities do not recognise the legitimacy of some of Afghanistan’s diplomatic missions abroad, because of their ties to the previous government.
This poses a host of logistical issues, such as how to issue valid passports to returnees.
The EU’s exploratory missions to Afghanistan focused on these and other practical concerns, according to a source directly involved in the discussions.
“They’re looking at the planes, what is the capacity at the airport, they’re talking with the Taliban about what would happen to the people” who are returned, said the source.
“They’re testing the waters, they want to see if they can implement a mass deportation system.”
If that becomes a reality it should at the very least be accompanied by a significant increase in European aid flowing to the country, warned Jamal, the UN refugee agency’s representative.
“Returning people to Afghanistan without increasing assistance is incoherent, and is bound to create a risky imbalance,” he said.
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