Germany and several other European countries announced today that they are suspending decisions on asylum requests by Syrian citizens due to the unclear situation in Syria after the fall of Bashar al-Assad.
Germany's Federal Office for Migration and Refugees said more than 47.000 applications are currently pending.
It said it would reassess the situation and resume making decisions once things in Syria stabilize.
Spokesperson for the Ministry of the Interior, Sonja Kok, noted that asylum decisions take into account the circumstances of each case, which includes an assessment of the situation in the applicant's country.
She said migration authorities have the option of prioritizing cases from other places if the situation is unclear, as is currently the case in Syria.
Interior Minister Nancy Feiser said it was not yet possible to predict "concrete opportunities for Syrians to return to Syria" and that "it would be frivolous to speculate about that in such a volatile situation."
The interior ministry also said that as of October 31, there were almost a million Syrian nationals in Germany, most of whom had some kind of refugee or other protected status.
Austrian Chancellor Karl Nehamer also instructed his interior minister to suspend decisions on current Syrian asylum applications.
"It is important to establish the facts first, put the asylum and family reunification procedures on hold. We have to wait for the dust to settle, to see what happens," said Austrian Foreign Minister Alexander Schallenberg.
The Swedish Migration Agency said it will also pause decisions on Syrian asylum cases, explaining that it is currently not possible to assess the applicants' reasons for seeking protection.
It was not specified how long the break would last, but it was said that a similar decision was made when the Taliban returned to power in Afghanistan in 2021.
In Finland, the director of the International Protection Department at the Finnish Immigration Service, Antti Lehtinen, told the public service that decisions there have been suspended and that he could not immediately estimate how long the suspensions would last.
In Norway, the Directorate of Immigration announced a similar decision, saying it had put asylum applications from Syria on hold "until further notice".
The French government says it has considered following Germany's lead.
"We are working on the suspension of ongoing asylum files from Syria. We should make a decision in the coming hours," the French interior ministry said.
Their announcement adds that 450 asylum applications from Syrian citizens are pending in France.
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