EU should restore ties with Assad to curb migration, says Meloni

Italian PM Giorgia Meloni calls for better relations with the dictator to ‘help Syrian refugees return home’

Giorgia Meloni is leading EU calls to normalise relations with the Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad to facilitate migrant deportations to the country.
The Italian prime minister will hold private talks with several other leaders at the European Council summit on Thursday, which is set to be dominated by the topic of migration.
“It is necessary to review the European Union strategy for Syria and to work with all actors, to create the conditions for Syrian refugees to return to their homeland in a voluntary, safe and sustainable way,” Ms Meloni told the Italian Senate on Tuesday.
The EU cut off diplomatic ties with Syria in 2011 after Assad was accused of using chemical weapons on his own people in a bloody civil war.
In July, Italy, Austria, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Slovenia, Greece, Croatia and Cyprus called for a review of the strategy.
At the time, Josep Borrell, the EU’s most senior diplomat, warned that Syria had been operating with the support of Russia and Iran for years.
Earlier this year, Ms Meloni appointed an Italian ambassador to Damascus, Syria’s capital, for the first time in 12 years.
“There is no one who says: we will pick up the phone to call Assad,” an EU official told the Politico website. “Nobody dares to raise that, but it is a hidden suggestion by some.”
Ms Meloni’s stock will be high when she arrives in Brussels on Thursday as the EU considers implementing tougher measures on migration.
In an about-turn on Monday, Ursula von der Leyen, the European Commission president, said the EU should explore offshore detention camps where failed asylum seekers could be held before being deported.
She cited Italy’s controversial migrant deal with Albania as a model the EU could “draw lessons” from, ahead of summit talks on speeding up deportations and returns.
European countries host more than one million Syrian refugees, with 70 per cent of them in Germany and Sweden, according to the United Nations.
Syrians accounted for the highest number of people found illegally in the EU in 2023, according to the bloc’s statistics agency. The 252,900 illegal immigrants was an increase of 28.4 per cent compared with 2022.
More than 484,000 non-EU citizens were told to leave the EU last year but 91,500 – less than 20 per cent – followed the order.
Comment
Assad clung to power thanks to the help of Vladimir Putin. The Russian president gave military support to the regime, which was otherwise almost entirely isolated internationally.
Putin is now a pariah for his illegal invasion of Ukraine, which hopes to one day join the EU. Volodymyr Zelensky will be at the Brussels summit to present his “victory plan” to EU leaders.
The idea of normalising ties with Syria is not universally accepted among the 27 EU states.
Caspar Veldkamp, the Dutch foreign minister, told Politico that the Netherlands did not think Syria was a safe place to return asylum seekers to.