In the wake of the machete attack in Aschaffenburg, which left two dead, the European People’s Party (EVP) has called for negotiations with the Afghan authorities, controlled by the Taliban, to be initiated. “Asylum seekers who have committed serious crimes and their accomplices must be deported to Afghanistan, just as quickly as possible”said Manfred Weber, the party and faction leader of the EVP and a member of the Christian Social Union (CSU), in an interview with the ‘Welt’ newspaper. “The EU must immediately speak with Afghan authorities about this.”
Weber emphasized that the time for debates is over and that the EU needs to establish deportation centers and a binding deportation regulation as quickly as possible. Asylum applications from Afghans topped the list in the EU, Norway and Switzerland in 2024, according to unpublished numbers from the European Asylum Agency (EUAA). The report, marked as confidential, was published by the European Commission on January 10 and reported on by the ‘Welt’ newspaper.
According to the EUAA, the second-highest number of asylum applications came from Syria, with 150,094 applicants, followed by Venezuela with 73,565 and Turkey with 55,522. Four out of ten Afghans who apply for asylum in the EU, Norway and Switzerland, do so in Germany, accounting for 39% of the total, the EUAA reported. Germany is followed by Greece, Austria and the Netherlands, with much lower percentages. In Germany, 14% of the approximately 235,000 asylum applications in the past year came from Afghans and 31% of all applications were from Syrians.