{"id":102949,"date":"2026-06-08T18:24:14","date_gmt":"2026-06-08T18:24:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/102949\/"},"modified":"2026-06-08T18:24:14","modified_gmt":"2026-06-08T18:24:14","slug":"lack-of-any-visa-application-casts-doubt-on-taliban-talks-in-brussels-euobserver","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/102949\/","title":{"rendered":"Lack of any visa application casts doubt on Taliban talks in Brussels \u2013 EUobserver"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Taliban have yet to ask for Belgian visas for a possible meeting with the European Commission to discuss deportations to Afghanistan.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe haven\u2019t received a request for a Belgian visa, so at this moment no visas have been delivered, as we have not received a request yet,\u201d Laurens Soenen, spokesperson for Belgian\u2019s foreign ministry said.<\/p>\n

The EU Commission has consistently framed the controversial planned meeting with the Afghan rulers as a \u201ctechnical-level\u201d discussion, a formulation intended to avoid any implication of formal recognition of the Taliban. <\/p>\n

It also linked the expected talks to a proposal from 20 EU and Schengen states seeking better coordination on deportations of Afghans back to Kabul.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Speaking to EUobserver on Monday (8 June), Soenen said any such visas would take up to at least four weeks to process \u2014 raising questions on whether the Taliban will actually come to Brussels this month.<\/p>\n

Soenen said Belgium\u2019s minister of foreign affairs, Maxime Pr\u00e9vot, will not participate in any meetings with the Taliban delegation.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd it\u2019s highly unlikely that Belgian officials will take place in the meetings,\u201d he also said, noting that some other EU countries may be interested in joining.<\/p>\n

Sweden is likely among those countries, given it had sent last month, along with the commission, the invitation for the Taliban to come Brussels.<\/p>\n

For its part, the commission on Monday declined to comment on any new developments.<\/p>\n

Back in April, a commission spokesperson said of any discussion: \u201cThis is in particular about persons who have no right to stay in the union and who pose a security threat.\u201d <\/p>\n

But even that formulation appears somewhat misaligned.<\/p>\n

Johannes Luchner, the deputy director-general of the commission\u2019s home affairs branch, visited the Taliban in Afghanistan in January.<\/p>\n

Luchner said that while the intent is to return criminals, he also inferred others could follow.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Taliban have yet to ask for Belgian visas for a possible meeting with the European Commission to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":102950,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[104],"tags":[5754,211,210,37869,37866,37864,37867,37865,37868],"class_list":["post-102949","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-brussels","tag-typedefinedterm","tag-belgium","tag-brussels","tag-identifier23","tag-identifier4577","tag-nameafghanistan","tag-namemigration","tag-termcodeafghanistan","tag-termcodemigration"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@dk\/116715891543185822","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/102949","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=102949"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/102949\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/102950"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=102949"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=102949"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=102949"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}