Barely had he proclaimed himself the new head of the Syrian state when the former jihadist, Abu Mohammed al-Joulani, who now promises the establishment of a “Rule of law”called on Syrian exiles to return home. In 2024, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees estimates that 6.3 million Syrians have sought refuge abroad, including 19.8% in Europe. “In France, there are around 80,000, if we include family reunions and minors”adds Didier Leschi, director general of the French Office for Immigration and Integration. And 700 asylum application files are still in progress.
Very quickly, Germany and seven other European countries announced that they were suspending the examination of asylum applications from Syrians, unable to determine what risks were really incurred in the country during this period of instability. Refugees no longer have reason to fear the regime established by Bashar al-Assad, but the Islamist profiles and backgrounds of the country's new masters also generate fear and clashes continue in the north of the country, particularly between Kurds. and pro-Turkish fighters. The future is, obviously, uncertain.
Faced with this reality, the French Ministry of the Interior announced that it was working “on a suspension of ongoing asylum cases from Syria”. To which the French Office for the Protection of Refugees and Stateless Persons (Ofpra), responsible for examining these asylum requests, reacted by invoking an “evolving situation” which could in fact “lead to temporarily suspending decision-making”. Indeed, the 1951 UN Convention relating to the status of refugees specifies that the cessation of refugee status requires seeing things more clearly, and waiting for changes. “long-lasting and not temporary in nature” in the country of origin.
“It is too early to say whether they will return to Syria, where the political situation is unstable”
“It is too early to say whether they will return to Syria, where the political situation is unstable, where schools are closed, where more than a third of homes are destroyed! » indeed confirms Didier Leschi. And if Ofpra refuses to make “hasty decisions” on current requests, Didier Leschi specifies that there is no “There will be no expulsion of Syrians present on French soil. There is talk of suspending the examination of requests, but the simple request already grants rights to the person making it”.
Conversely, Austria, for example, announced a plan to expel refugees welcomed in recent years because they were fleeing the regime in place, and whose status could therefore be re-examined. And if the European Commission specified that this return had to be voluntary, this did not prevent several countries from considering these departures, starting with France. The Minister for Europe and Foreign Affairs, Jean-Noël Barrot, indeed judged that there was “a hope that Syrian refugees in the Middle East, and perhaps soon in Europe, can finally return to their country”. The subject of the return of Syrian refugees has animated debates in all the countries concerned for years. In Lebanon, a small country which alone hosts 12.4% of them; in Türkiye, which hosts almost 50%, or in Europe, a continent still marked by the 2015 migration crisis and its numerous political consequences.
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This return was also part of the discussions at the European Council meeting in October, when around ten Member States had been demanding, since last July, a normalization of relations with the Syrian government to return these refugees to safe areas of the country. Because since 2015, migratory flows from Syria have never really stopped. According to the latest data from the Border Police (Paf), consulted by the JDD, Syrians appear in the Top 3 nationalities among migrants intercepted in the central Mediterranean, who seek to disembark mainly in Greece.
Over the first eight months of 2024, Syrians represented 73% of arrivals on Hellenic soil. Since 2019, specifies the European Union Agency for Asylum, 600,000 Syrians have applied for asylum in Europe. A figure which, although significant, has continued to decrease since the height of the migration crisis in Europe, nine years ago.
Air call
Fabrice Leggeri, now an MEP for the National Rally, was the president of the European agency Frontex at the height of the Syrian migration crisis. He remembers: “I took office a few months before the start of the crisis, in 2015. I quickly alerted European leaders to the scale it could take, but they only half listened to me. » His agents, in fact, saw the incessant flows passing by. “They passed through Turkey, reached Greece by boat and walked to the German border, often in deplorable conditions. »
The right to asylum has been misused in a massive and unprecedented way in history
But if this crisis has particularly marked Europeans, it is because the emergence of this new migratory route has had the effect of a call for air for other nationalities, Afghans and North Africans in particular. “Many saw it as an opportunity to enter the Schengen area”explains Leggeri again. Everyone tried to blend in with the flow, sometimes by buying false papers from Syrian refugees directly. For the former boss of Frontex, the 2015 migration crisis saw the right to asylum be misused in a massive and unprecedented way in history. “I believe that far-left NGOs played a major role in this misdirection. In the name of the right to asylum, we turned a blind eye and let in an immeasurable number of people who were not legitimately entitled to refugee status…”
Could the new situation in Syria relieve European countries in a hurry to respond to popular anxieties on the subject? Didier Leschi recalls that Syrian nationals in France constitute a “marginal presence”and that most “live with family, with wife and children”. Before adding: “Unlike Afghan refugees for example, 80% alone and male. » But there, the Taliban are still in power.
