Asylum limbo
Europe’s approach to Syrian asylum seekers enters a new phase

The limbo into which tens of thousands of Syrian asylum-seekers in Europe were placed after most governments suspended consideration of their applications after the Assad regime’s downfall could soon end, although many hoping for a stable residence status in the EU might not like the direction things are heading.

In Germany — by far the most significant destination for Syrians — more than 47,000 asylum applications have been frozen since 9 December 2024, including over 46,000 first-time filings. Austria has seen around 7,300 cases suspended, and Greece roughly 9,000. In the UK, 7,386 Syrians were awaiting an initial decision as of the end of March 2025. France, by contrast, resumed review of some 700 temporarily frozen applications earlier this year, and continues to process new ones. Spain and Portugal, both outliers in EU asylum policy, never halted their case-by-case approach.

Encouraging returns
Since Assad’s ouster, European governments have been busy engaging with the new Syrian leadership. German and Austrian interior ministers, for instance, met in Damascus in April with Syria’s transitional Interior Minister, Anas Khattab, to discuss voluntary returns. Development officials from several European countries have also made visits, conveying the message that they want to support Syria’s recovery with money, expertise, and political recognition. Part of the calculus is, of course, that this might encourage refugee returns and deter new departures. 

Some countries are experimenting with creative measures. In May, Cyprus — the EU member geographically closest to Syria, with 4,226 Syrian asylum applications filed in 2024 — announced financial incentives to Syrians willing to return. Families would also be allowed to keep a breadwinner in Cyprus for up to three years. The deal is only open, however, to those who withdraw pending asylum claims or give up protection status already granted. 

Falling numbers
Over the course of 2024, the flow of Syrian asylum applicants to Europe has decreased sharply. In the fourth quarter of 2024 222,910 first-time asylum applications were made in the EU. Of these, 35,705 – 16 per cent - were made by Syrians, who were the largest group. This was a 42 per cent fall on the 61,745 Syrian first-time applications in the fourth quarter of 2023. 

In the UK in the year to March 2025 109,343 asylum applications were made. 6,175 – 5.7 per cent – were made by Syrians. Of these, 4,342 claims were from Syrians who had crossed the English Channel by small boat. In terms of overall claims, Syrians were in fifth place after Pakistanis, Afghans, Iranians and Bangladeshis. In the same period (i.e. largely prior to the freeze), 98 per cent of Syrian asylum applications were approved at first request.

In the first quarter of 2025 23,135 people claimed asylum in the UK – 26 per cent down on the 31,276 of the preceding quarter. Likely reflecting the impact of Assad’s downfall, between the two quarters Syrian asylum claims fell by 81 per cent, from 2,280 to just 443.

The danger
The violence and massacres along the coast in March, in which approximately 400 pro-government forces and at least 1,700 Alawite civilians died, was well-publicised and underlined the state’s general dysfunction. Largely unreported are the daily acts of vengeance, which have so far taken the lives of hundreds of actual or suspected Assad loyalists. 

Vengeance is not the only motivation for violence. In late April Idlib-based feminist and women’s rights activist Hiba Ezzideen Al-Hajji advocated online against forced marriages. She, her family and the NGO she heads, Equity and Empowerment, have since faced a backlash from Islamists and others that has included threats of murder.  

Upwards of 6 million Syrians remain in exile, mainly in neighbouring countries. The UN’s refugee agency, the UNHCR, records that, as of February, 300,000 refugees and 850,000 internally displaced people had returned since Assad’s downfall; but that over 7.4 million Syrians were still displaced inside the country. The agency highlighted a lack of housing, work and services as key impediments to returns, and called for massive increases in international aid for resettlement. It notes that, as of end-February, only 10 per cent of a planned 2025 outlay of $564 million had been pledged. While the agency continues to monitor developments, it has not updated its guidance on returns since Assad’s ouster, maintaining that conditions in Syria still fall short of the standards for safe, voluntary, and dignified repatriation. That said, UNHCR assessments have rarely played a decisive role in shaping EU refugee policy. New guidance from the European Union Agency for Asylum (EUAA) is expected in the coming months.

Forcing the issue
Broader policy changes around asylum procedures and revocation of existing statuses will likely have a far greater impact in reducing asylum numbers. The initial freeze in processing applications was meant to allow time for reassessing conditions in Syria. Europe’s widespread freezing of asylum applications sits uncomfortably with key elements of the 1951 Refugee Convention and international law. Both the Convention and the EU’s Directive 2013/32/EU require protection claims to be assessed fairly and individually on the basis of their individual merits. But six months on, many applicants are growing impatient. And in some cases, national courts are forcing the issue.

On 23 May 2025, the German Administrative Court of Karlsruhe ruled that the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees (BAMF) must issue a decision on the asylum application of a Syrian national who had been waiting since October 2023. The applicant had taken legal action after more than a year of administrative silence. The court found that the situation in Syria was now sufficiently assessable, pointing to the relative stability of the new government led by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), which currently controls most of the country. 

Although the Karlsruhe ruling applies only to this individual case, it may have a considerable signal effect. Intriguingly, the ruling drew on a classified March 2025 country report by BAMF, as well as a publicly available — though relatively superficial — report from the EUAA. BAMF’s country reports are usually public. “It seems something is different with this one, given that it’s classified but was seen by the court,” Dr. Valentin Feneberg, a researcher in political science at Leuphana University Lüneburg, specialising in migration and asylum law, told Syria in Transition.

At the start of May BAMF had already resumed allowing a small number of applicants at least to lodge their asylum claims — a tentative step suggesting the broader freeze may be easing. This appears to be part of a wider European trend. On 12 June 2025, the Dutch Immigration and Naturalisation Service (IND) announced it would immediately resume processing approximately 16,870 pending and new Syrian asylum applications. The move came just a week after a Dutch court ordered the publication of the foreign ministry’s most recent Syria report.

The IND made clear that applicants must now demonstrate an individualised risk of serious harm to qualify for protection. That significantly raises the bar and signals the likely end of a period in which most Syrians were granted subsidiary protection based on the general conditions in Syria, without having to prove personal persecution.

BAMF had already shifted its reasoning in 2020, amid growing political pressure and tendencies in Europe to normalise relations with Damascus. Instead of citing civil war as grounds for protection, it focused on the risk of torture and abuse upon return. “For the BAMF, the civil war essentially ended in 2020 as far as asylum law was concerned, even though they still saw risks for returnees,” Feneberg explained. “The rationale just changed.”

What’s next
Now, with Assad gone, and systematic torture and punishment for military draft evasion no longer widespread, BAMF may conclude, similar to the Dutch IND, that such risks no longer justify protection. But whether that will lead to mass rejections from the Germans is not clear yet. Another possible outcome is a blanket deportation ban — a legal category used for countries like Afghanistan after the Taliban takeover in 2021. Under such a policy, individual cases are still assessed, but in the absence of personal risk factors, most would instead receive protection under a humanitarian status, which doesn’t allow for family reunification, makes labor market access harder, and offers fewer pathways to citizenship. This would also affect the estimated 200,000 to 300,000 Syrians in Germany currently holding subsidiary protection. Their status could be downgraded, though mass deportations remain unrealistic. Legal safeguards make revocation of protection complex, and losing protection status doesn’t automatically invalidate a residence permit. But it would still mark a shift — both in legal tone and in the signal sent across Europe.

Germany’s approach in the coming months will implicitly serve as a judgment on how well the transitional government under President Ahmad al-Sharaa has stabilised the country. For this new phase of refugee policy to be fair and workable, transparency will be key. In Germany, declassifying the BAMF country report would be a welcome start.

Uncertainty
The blanket freezing of Syrian asylum applications – already lasting six months – is causing immense frustration amongst affected persons. It is especially galling to those whose applications have nothing to do with the Assad regime and those who would be at risk despite the regime change: women threatened with honour crimes, women’s rights advocates and human rights defenders, and persons in fear of the Islamist groups in the alliance that now holds power. 

Throughout the Syrian conflict, governments have shifted their asylum policies repeatedly, often leaving it to courts to navigate the fallout. Much of that litigation has been slow, bureaucratic, and sometimes based on dubious assumptions. This time, the process needs to be not just legally sound, but also coherent and grounded in a shared commitment to fairness and transparency. That matters not just for Syrians seeking protection, but for shaping the kind of relationship that Europeans hope to build with both the Syrian diaspora and a nascent Syrian state.