Why European Leaders Are Talking to the Taliban About Sending Afghans Home

Fifteen European ambassadors met with Taliban officials in Brussels on June 23, 2026. The main topic: whether Afghan refugees in Europe can be sent back to Afghanistan. It was the first time Taliban representatives held this kind of meeting in the EU's capital city. Courthouse News Human rights groups were angry when news of the meeting came out. But the goal was specific rather than wide-ranging. European governments want to deport Afghans they consider dangerous, and to do that they need a way to talk to the Taliban, who now control Afghanistan. Al Jazeera

This meeting did not come out of nowhere. In 2024, Germany became the first EU country to end its unofficial ban on sending Afghans back to Kabul. Germany also became the first EU country to work with Taliban-appointed diplomats at Afghan offices in Berlin and Bonn. Since then, other EU countries have followed with different levels of contact. Al Jazeera

The number of people involved is large. About half a million Afghans have asked for asylum in the EU since the Taliban took control of Afghanistan in August 2021. Asylum is when a country agrees to protect someone who is fleeing danger in their home country. That half-million figure came after an earlier evacuation of about 4,500 Afghan staff and their family members — people who had worked as interpreters, security guards, or employees of the EU's police mission and were pulled out when Kabul fell. Al Jazeera

In May 2026, Afghans filed more asylum applications in EU+ countries than any other group — about 5,600 that month. Of those, 35 percent were repeat applications filed in the same country. That monthly number was 12 percent lower than the previous period. But looking at the full year, the EU's asylum agency recorded a 33-percent increase in Afghan asylum applications. EUAA The same agency, called the EU Agency for Asylum, published guidance in June 2026 to help officials across EU countries make more consistent decisions. One notable point: the guidance says Afghan women may qualify for refugee status based only on their nationality and gender. EUAA

The clash between these two goals — sending some Afghans back while protecting others — shows up in real people's lives. Abdul Wali is an Afghan refugee living in the Netherlands. In 2023, the Dutch government gave him a special coin and certificate for his service in Afghanistan. He had arrived in November 2021 after Dutch politicians and military officers pushed for his evacuation, because the Taliban had threatened him for working with a Dutch aid organization called Cordaid and for helping an interpreter who worked with the Dutch military. But the Netherlands later changed its law. Afghan refugees who had been granted protection now hold only temporary residency permits, leaving them uncertain about their future. Al Jazeera

Outside of Europe, Afghans are already returning home in large numbers. So far in 2026, more than 232,500 Afghans have returned, including 146,206 from Pakistan and 86,253 from Iran, according to UNHCR, the UN's refugee agency. UNHCR Since September 2023, more than 4 million Afghans have returned from Iran and Pakistan combined, with over 1.5 million returning in 2025 alone. Chatham House At the end of 2025, UNHCR counted about 3.7 million Afghan refugees or others in need of international protection, a 36-percent drop from the year before. UNHCR

Europe itself hosted more than 20 million forcibly displaced and stateless people by the end of 2025, including 5.2 million refugees, according to UNHCR. UNHCR In Iran, UNHCR estimated that about 1.65 million displaced people of various legal statuses were living in the country in 2026, including some 770,000 refugees. UNHCR The overall regional picture is one of fewer people officially counted as refugees, even as displacement continues.

The rules Europe uses to manage all of this are changing. The EU Pact on Migration and Asylum, described by IOM and UNHCR, is meant to make EU asylum systems faster and more consistent by creating a shared framework for cooperation among member countries. IOM/UNHCR The European Commission adopted a resettlement plan for 2026-2027 on December 18, 2025. European Commission EU countries have taken in more than 53,000 people through humanitarian admission programs, most of them Afghans at risk. European Commission In 2025, the EU used a "whole-of-route" approach — meaning it tried to coordinate with many different groups along the migration path. EUAA

The bigger picture is that European politics on asylum have moved to the right. That shift has squeezed the political room for humanitarian protection, even though the laws that provide that protection are still technically in place. The European Parliament's own research service found that as of early May 2026, neither the Middle East conflict nor the civil war in Sudan had caused more people to seek asylum in Europe. In other words, the pressure behind these policy changes is political as much as it is about actual numbers. European Parliament A European government can run a program to protect Afghans at risk and at the same time send ambassadors to talk about returns with the Taliban. The Netherlands shows this contradiction clearly: it decorated Abdul Wali for his service, then turned his refugee status into a temporary permit. Whether the EU can keep these two tracks running side by side — without one eventually swallowing the other — is the question that will shape Afghan refugee policy for the rest of the decade.