Members of the European Parliament have begun anticipating the European Union’s role in a predicted humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan following the Taliban takeover this week.
During an extraordinary meeting of the European Parliament’s development and foreign affairs committees Thursday, legislators called for more information on surviving channels for distributing humanitarian aid in a country where an estimated 18 million people are already in need of humanitarian assistance, even as fault lines begin to emerge among MEPs over how to address the anticipated refugee flows from Afghanistan.
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Humanitarian aid: Committee members underscored the call from the EU’s top diplomat, Josep Borrell, for ongoing — and potentially increased — humanitarian aid to Afghanistan. There was no clear answer from EU officials to repeated questions from MEPs about how, exactly, that aid would be delivered — whether through U.N. agencies, international NGOs, or the Taliban.
Fernando Gentilini, an official in the European External Action Service, said the current priority was still on evacuating Afghan members of the EU staff. He assured MEPs that in terms of humanitarian assistance, while “it will be an issue to increase the effort, to readjust initiatives, it’s not that we are starting from scratch. We have something in place.”
Refugee crisis: MEPs repeatedly raised concerns about refugees fleeing Afghanistan, with several members calling for the EU to provide support to neighboring countries. While some members demanded the EU to take steps that would mitigate the arrival of refugees at the border of member states, Borrell raised the possibility of invoking the body’s 2001 Temporary Protection Directive. Never invoked, the directive allows countries to admit refugees for a limited period of time.
What’s next? Even as evacuation efforts continue, committee members called for a debate of the full European Parliament once the body returns from its August recess.