Taliban officials invited for migrant return talks

Brussels (AFP) — The European Commission told Agence France-Presse (AFP) that it plans to invite Taliban officials to Brussels in the near future for talks on returning migrants to Afghanistan.

According to sources close to the matter, a letter is to be sent “imminently” to Kabul to arrange a date for a meeting in the Belgian capital.

The visit, coordinated with Sweden, would follow two trips by European officials to Afghanistan on the same issue.

Officials are now “working on a potential follow-up meeting at technical level in Brussels with the de facto authorities in Afghanistan,” a spokesperson for the European Union (EU) executive said.

No specific date has yet been raised for the visit.

As part of a broader tightening of immigration policies, around 20 EU countries are exploring how to return migrants — particularly those with criminal convictions — to Afghanistan.

In a letter in October, several urged the EU to find diplomatic and practical ways to move the issue forward.

“In this context a technical meeting took place in Kabul in January 2026,” the commission spokesperson said.

He added that the 27-member EU was now working jointly with Sweden to “pursue these discussions” in Brussels.

Such visits raise a host of practical and ethical questions, not least because they involve engaging with Taliban authorities, who are not formally recognized by the EU.

The Taliban have been largely isolated on the global stage since they imposed a strict version of Islamic law upon returning to power in 2021.

To travel to Brussels, Taliban officials would need to be granted an exceptional visa — something Belgium is in principle ready to do, in its capacity as host country to the European institutions.

“If the European Commission were to invite a delegation from the Taliban regime, that could indeed be the case,” Audrey Jacquiez, spokesperson for Belgian Foreign Minister Maxime Prevot, told AFP when asked about a possible exemption.

Beyond the practicalities, the European push on returns comes as Afghanistan confronts a severe humanitarian crisis.

Since 2023, more than five million Afghans have returned from Iran and Pakistan, often forcibly.

According to international organizations, most of them live in extreme hardship, without stable housing or employment.

EU countries received about a million asylum applications filed by Afghans between 2013 and 2024, according to the bloc’s data agency.

About half as many were approved over the period.

In 2025, Afghans still — by far — accounted for the largest share of asylum applicants in the EU.

But as the public mood has soured on migration, Europe has looked to scale back its welcome and started discussing how to send Afghan migrants back home.

Some countries have pushed ahead, with Germany deporting more than 100 Afghans with criminal convictions since 2024, via charter flights facilitated by Qatar.

Attitudes in the country have been hardened by several fatal attacks by Afghans in recent years, including a car-ramming in Munich last year.