{"id":69522,"date":"2026-04-27T15:06:20","date_gmt":"2026-04-27T15:06:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/69522\/"},"modified":"2026-04-27T15:06:20","modified_gmt":"2026-04-27T15:06:20","slug":"eu-silent-on-whether-taliban-envoys-will-visit-brussels-euobserver","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/69522\/","title":{"rendered":"EU silent on whether Taliban envoys will visit Brussels \u2013 EUobserver"},"content":{"rendered":"

The European Commission has declined to confirm whether Taliban representatives will travel to Brussels for talks on deportations to Afghanistan.<\/p>\n

Following recent media reports<\/a> suggesting a possible meeting later this summer, Markus Lammert, commission spokesperson said only that \u201ccontacts at technical level are ongoing.\u201d<\/p>\n

Speaking to reporters on Monday (27 April), Lammert said such contacts do not amount to the diplomatic recognition of the Taliban, a militant outfit that has stripped women of their rights and carries out widespread abuses.<\/p>\n

Such contacts have been going on since at least August 2021, when the EU announced it would reach out to the Taliban to help protect women <\/a>and girls after they took over the country.<\/p>\n

Since then, those rights have sharply deteriorated. The Taliban have issued around 100 decrees, including bans on education and other measures that effectively silence women.<\/p>\n

Last August, the UN said<\/a> the Taliban were closer than ever to achieving their vision of a society that completely erases women from public life.<\/p>\n

The European Court of Justice has also ruled<\/a> that Afghan women can be recognised as refugees solely on the basis of their gender and nationality
without requiring any other justifications.<\/p>\n

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

But the EU\u2019s attention has since shifted into deporting Afghan nationals in Europe convicted of committing a crime, as part of a wider politically-charged initiative to crack down on asylum.<\/p>\n

Some 20 EU interior ministers last October demanded the commission to coordinate contacts with the Taliban on returns for those Afghan nationals with no right to remain in Europe.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is what the commission is now following up on,\u201d said Lammert.<\/p>\n

In January, Johannes Luchner, a senior European Commission official in the home affairs department, travelled to Kabul alongside Belgium\u2019s migration minister, Anneleen Van Bossuyt.<\/p>\n

Speaking to European lawmakers at a hearing the same month, Luchner said the EU was not engaging with the Taliban on legal migration.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur first interest is the return of criminals,\u201d he said, adding that there is also \u201can increasing number of non-criminal Afghans\u201d subject to return orders.<\/p>\n

Last year, Germany revoked resettlement pledges for Afghans in Pakistan, leading to a criminal complaint<\/a> against Germany\u2019s interior and foreign ministers.<\/p>\n

And in February, Germany deported 20 Afghans with criminal convictions from Leipzig to Kabul on a charter flight amid similar efforts by Austria and Denmark.<\/p>\n

But efforts to deport Afghans with no criminal convictions are also unfolding.<\/p>\n

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

Last month, the Strasbourg-based European Court of Human Rights ruled against Sweden\u2019s attempt to deport an Afghan man of Hazara ethnicity.<\/p>\n

The court cited both the risks linked to his ethnic background, which is persecuted by the Taliban, and his \u201cwesternisation\u201d during a 10-year stay in Sweden.<\/p>\n

More Afghans filed asylum claims in the EU last year than any other nationality, representing some 14 percent of total applications, followed by Venezuelans (11 percent) and Syrians (five percent).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The European Commission has declined to confirm whether Taliban representatives will travel to Brussels for talks on deportations…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":69523,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[104],"tags":[5754,211,210,37869,16029,37866,37864,37867,16027,37865,37868,16028],"class_list":{"0":"post-69522","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-brussels","8":"tag-typedefinedterm","9":"tag-belgium","10":"tag-brussels","11":"tag-identifier23","12":"tag-identifier4403","13":"tag-identifier4577","14":"tag-nameafghanistan","15":"tag-namemigration","16":"tag-namesociety","17":"tag-termcodeafghanistan","18":"tag-termcodemigration","19":"tag-termcodesociety"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@dk\/116477295826880855","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69522","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=69522"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69522\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/69523"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=69522"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=69522"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=69522"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}