Media: EU mulls reopening diplomatic channels with Syria to address migrant crisis

Some European Union countries, led by Italy, are pushing to normalize ties with Syria in order to facilitate deportations of migrants as mainstream leaders look to replicate anti-immigrant far-right parties’ surging popularity across the Continent.

On October 15, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni said that it is necessary to review the European Union Strategy for Syria and to work with all actors, Caliber.Az reports per Politico.

"This will help create the conditions for Syrian refugees to return to their homeland in a voluntary, safe, and sustainable way," Meloni told the Italian Senate ahead of the EU leaders’ meeting.

After Bashar Assad’s violent crackdown on protesters in 2011 spiralled into a bloody civil war, his government was accused of using chemical weapons on its own people and was accused of torture.

The EU cut off diplomatic ties with the country in 2011. The regime survived and its operations continued in major part due to the military support of Russian President Vladimir Putin. The civil war has since ground to a standstill and the Syrian president has faced near-total global isolation. 

Meloni plans to raise the relationship with Damascus during a meeting of the 27 EU leaders in Brussels on October 17, two EU diplomats told POLITICO.  

Those calls from one of the EU’s largest countries come on top of a concerted push by a group of others, some of which have hard-right or far-right parties in government (or supporting government), such as Austria and Hungary.

The push to normalize relations with war-torn Syria and its president comes after a surge in support for anti-immigrant parties after the European election in June, namely France’s National Rally and Germany’s Alternative for Germany.

Notably, in recent weeks, Poland’s prime minister has drawn a rebuke from the EU executive for saying that Warsaw would suspend asylum rights for migrants coming to Poland via Belarus, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz has shut his country’s borders to EU neighbors following a knife attack allegedly involving a migrant and France’s newly appointed prime minister, Michel Barnier, has said EU rules on deportations should be revised to speed up expulsions.

One EU diplomat echoed Meloni, saying Israel’s ground operations after its invasion of Lebanon in early October added momentum to the push for deporting Syrian migrants. Nearly 200,000 Syrians and Lebanese have fled to Syria since the start of October, according to the UN.

In Europe, more than 1 million Syrian refugees and asylum seekers have arrived in the past 10 years, according to 2021 data from the UN Refugee Agency. 

“The situation in the Middle East has completely changed the discussion,” the EU diplomat said, referring to the current war in Lebanon. 

By Aghakazim Guliyev