Eager to expand deportation possibilities, the pragmatism of the European Union is expanding with few constraints. To the agreements, despite their authoritarian histories, with Tunisia or Egypt to shield the community territory and curb arrivals, another controversial move is now added: the approach to the Taliban, a regime marked by its serious and systematic human rights violations in Afghanistan, especially against women and girls. The invitation to Brussels by the European Commission to a Taliban delegation to discuss how to increase deportations has reopened the debate on the limits of migration policy and on the whitewashing of authoritarian regimes if they align with European interests. Human rights organizations and left-wing political groups warn that the community executive’s initiative may de facto legitimize the regime.
The background scenario is especially disturbing: an increasingly harsh migration discourse, increasingly severe asylum conditions, and a Europe moving forward to create deportation centers outside the community club. Step by step, the Union has hardened its migration policy and is advancing at high speed to break taboos unthinkable a few years ago that aim to blow up the current asylum rights system, one of the values on which the foundation of the bloc rests, born after World War II. And among those taboos is the approach to the Taliban, who took power in Afghanistan in 2021.
The EU does not recognize the Taliban government, but despite this, a delegation of the Afghan Islamist regime, led by the spokesperson of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Abdul Qahar Balkhi, will visit Brussels in June to meet with high-level officials from the European Commission, the European External Action Service (EEAS), and representatives of some member states, such as Sweden, which is helping coordinate contacts, according to European sources.
The meeting arises after another —“technical,” according to the community executive— meeting between the Taliban and European officials in Afghanistan. At the Brussels meeting, which has not yet taken shape, they will discuss finding “practical and diplomatic” ways to increase the expulsions of migrants without the right to asylum, especially those with criminal records, diplomatic sources say. According to data from the EU Asylum Agency, Afghans, with 17,000 applications, were the nationals who submitted the most requests in the community club in 2025.
Social Democrats and left-wing groups in the European Parliament criticize the community executive’s initiative, which follows the request of about twenty countries —Spain did not support the letter signed by, among others, Germany, Sweden, Belgium, Austria, Italy, the Netherlands, or Poland— to find ways to promote the return of migrants to Afghanistan.
Socialist MEP Juan Fernando López Aguilar, member of the Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs of the European Parliament, has received the news of the invitation to the Taliban with “astonishment” and “indignation.” His group will seek to bring the matter to debate in the plenary of the European Parliament, despite the agenda —like the entire chamber after the 2024 elections— being dominated by the right.
The paradox is enormous. Not only because of the memory of the massive evacuation operations by a good number of Western allies of vulnerable Afghan people in 2021. Also, in 2024 and 2025, the European Parliament approved resolutions condemning the Taliban regime for its systematic oppression of women and continuous human rights violations in Afghanistan, which it described as a “gender apartheid”; while demanding the immediate abolition of restrictions on women, the release of detainees, and an increase in humanitarian aid.
“How low the European Commission has fallen, entirely subordinated to the ultra-conservative majority of the Council, which has invited the Taliban to Brussels to discuss how to repatriate Afghans without any security, without any guarantee of respect for their rights, without any consideration of human rights,” criticizes the Spanish socialist MEP.
Chiara Catelli, from the International Platform for Cooperation on Undocumented Migrants (PICUM), explains that these meetings between the EU and the regime that rules Afghanistan with an iron fist reflect a broader initiative by several member states to establish deportation agreements with third countries, including regimes with a poor human rights record. Germany, for example, where migrant deportations to Afghanistan have increased according to investigative journalism, is also considering establishing its own agreement with the Taliban.
Attempts were already made with Syria before Bashar al-Assad’s fall, and now, with the new regime, the EU has restored dialogue, among other things, to encourage the return of Syrian refugees.
“This rush by the EU and its member states to forcibly return people to Afghanistan at any cost is illegal and detached from reality,” says Amnesty International. “It ignores the reasons why these people fled and the serious dangers they face if returned. Moreover, it shows a blatant disregard for states’ international obligations, violating the binding principle of non-refoulement. The EU must urgently and radically change course,” the organization emphasizes.
Human rights and migrant protection organizations also warn that with the latest moves, the EU is sacrificing legal guarantees and fundamental rights to promote an increasingly expulsion-focused migration policy and the outsourcing of borders. The Council of Europe has also warned about the risk of prolonged detentions, restrictions on the right to appeal, and deportations to unsafe countries.
Since 2024, the European Union has accelerated a drastic shift towards harsher migration policies, details Catelli, such as the Migration and Asylum Pact. Added to this is the return regulation, which is now undergoing final procedures and follows the European path to increase deportations across Europe. “That regulation would expand immigrant detention, weaken guarantees in return procedures, separate families, and allow sending people to countries with which they have no connection,” warns the activist.
The controversial meeting with the Taliban is part of a much larger effort by the European Union to increase the number of deportations. The European Commission maintains that only about 20% of people with expulsion orders end up being effectively deported. And it considers that figure “unacceptable.”
López Aguilar also sees the controversial meeting in Brussels with the Taliban as one more element of a broader picture, Europe’s drift to shield itself, which also includes the return regulation and some countries flirting with the idea of opening deportation centers outside community territory, like those Italy has in Albania. “The approach to the Taliban is an unrecognizable degradation of the moral standard required of the European Union,” he concludes.
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