EU’S stalemate leaves refugees out in the cold
Asylum-seekers stuck in limbo see little progress
BRUSSELS – Some refugees and asylum-seekers in Brussels have been spending months in between the Street of Palaces and the Small Castle – quite literally. Unfortunately, it’s not a dream come true at the end of their fearful flight from halfway across the globe. It’s a perpetual nightmare.
Petit Chateau, which means small castle, is a government reception center that often does anything but welcome arrivals. The Rue des Palais – street of palaces – has the city’s worst squat, where the smell of urine and the prevalence of scurvy have come to symbolize how the European Union’s migration policy is failing.
They are only 21⁄2 miles from the sleek Europa Building where EU leaders will hold a two-day summit starting Thursday to deal with migration issues that have vexed the 27 member nations for more than a decade.
Shinwari, an Afghan army captain who long helped Western powers try to stave off the Taliban, now lives in a makeshift tent camp right on the canal opposite Petit Chateau.
“It is very cold. Some guys have different diseases and many of us are suffering from depression, because we don’t know what will happen tomorrow,” said the 31-year-old, who left behind his wife and four children, convinced that Taliban forces that took over in August 2021 would kill soldiers like him who worked with NATO countries.
“They search houses. No one’s life was safe,” Shinwari said.
Even now, far from home, he’s too scared to be identified beyond his last name and with only the vaguest military details. He doesn’t want his face shown in photos or video, for fear the Taliban might hurt his family.
Exacerbating his plight is the reception he’s been given in the wealthy EU – largely marked by indifference, sometimes even hostility. The vocabulary of EU leaders before the summit is much more about “strengthening external borders,” “border fences” and “return procedures” than about making life better for people like Shinwari.
And with 330,000 unauthorized attempts made to enter the EU last year – a six-year record – projecting a warm embrace for refugees doesn’t win many elections on the continent these days.
Many Afghans also look with envy at the swift measures that the EU took after Russia invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24, 2022, to grant Ukrainians temporary
protection measures such as residency rights, labor market access, medical aid and social welfare assistance – things that all largely pass them by.
“The issue of Afghans and Ukrainians are the same, but they don’t get treated the same way,” Shinwari said. “When Ukrainians come here, they are provided with all the facilities … on the first day of their arrival, but we Afghans who have left our country due to security threats, we don’t get anything.”
EU leaders have already said a full breakthrough on their migration policies won’t come before blocwide elections in June 2024. The EU’S Agency for Asylum said in its latest trends report in November that “the gap between applications and decisions had reached the largest extent since 2015,” and was widening still. Overall, it said, more than 920,000 cases were still pending, a 14% annual increase.