During a discussion organised on Tuesday 18 February at the European Parliament, the Committee on Civil Liberties (LIBE) discussed the judgment handed down in October 2024 by the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU), according to which the discriminatory measures imposed on Afghan women by the Taliban regime constitute persecution within the meaning of the Qualification Directive, which lays down the conditions for granting refugee status in the EU (see EUROPE 13497/15).
The majority of MEPs welcomed the decision, stressing the urgent need to apply the judgment in full to “enable these women not to embark on a long asylum procedure” and to “reduce bureaucracy”, in the words of Hannah Neumann (Greens/EFA, German).
However, other MEPs expressed concern about the possible implications of the judgment in terms of family reunification and immigration. “Each of these women is someone's mother, wife or daughter”, said Mariusz Kamiński (ECR, Polish). “Overnight, millions of Afghan nationals could find themselves legally in the EU”, he worried.
Faced with this reticence, Fabiane Baxewanos, head of European affairs at the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR), retorted that “the number of [Afghan] women who manage to escape is limited”, as they cannot cross the border without men. And “the vast majority of Afghan refugees settle in neighbouring countries such as Pakistan or Iran”, she pointed out.
The representative also expressed her “astonishment” at the controversy caused by the CJEU judgment, stressing that neither the directive on family reunification nor the Member States' ability to provide for certain exclusions from asylum in the event of criminal conduct had been amended.
Michael Shotter, Director of the European Commission's Directorate-General for Migration and Home Affairs (DG HOME), also called for “no hasty conclusions”, rejecting the idea of automatic asylum for all Afghan women. “Each case will have to be studied individually and impartially”, he added.
Read the CJEU judgment: https://aeur.eu/f/fkd (Original version in French by Justine Manaud - intern)