The European Union should be motivated by humanitarian needs in Afghanistan, not fears of migrants fleeing the Taliban, the bloc’s foreign affairs chief said Tuesday.
Addressing the European Parliament in Strasbourg, the EU high representative for foreign affairs, Josep Borrell, set out his priorities after the 20-year war ended last month with the withdrawal of the U.S. and its allies.
He said the priority was helping 5 million people in the north of the country facing starvation on humanitarian grounds, “not because we are afraid that if we don't they will emigrate and cause a problem for us at home.”
“They are not the ones who are going to emigrate. They are very far away, they live in the mountains, they don't have the strength to emigrate. We must help them before winter, because if we do not help them it will be blocked by snow and we will not be able to get [aid] to them,” he said.
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Borrell said the Taliban had picked a hard-line government but that it was still necessary to engage with them in a calibrated way based on their behavior on issues such as access for aid and women’s rights. The Spaniard said the commission was considering using its delegation in the country “as an antenna if the security conditions are met, in order to discuss with the government in a closer way than through video conferences or through messages.”
“The withdrawal of the United States should not ipso facto mean our geostrategic exclusion,” Borrell said. “Food aid first, humanitarian aid first, but then a presence that allows us to closely monitor what is happening in the country.”
In the immediate wake of the evacuation, the European Commission upped its planned budget for humanitarian assistance fourfold to €200 million ($236 million) for 2021. And the president of the commission announced a further €100 million in aid Wednesday. Officials are debating a larger package, designed to also help neighboring countries absorb possible migrants.
“Asylum-seekers and migrants are no threat at all in the first place. They are posing a humanitarian challenge to the EU for a good reason.”
— Juan Fernando López Aguilar, member of European ParliamentA meeting of EU home affairs ministers in late August was criticized for a disproportionate focus on the possible implications for European countries should large numbers of Afghans seek to flee.
That fear surfaced again at Tuesday’s debate in the parliament, with Jérôme Rivière, a French far-right member of European Parliament, warning that “member states have to protect themselves and to protect their populations. The people of Europe should not be subjected to more migration such as the one that followed [the] Syrian conflict.”
But center-left Spanish MEP Juan Fernando López Aguilar told reporters that it is “preposterous” and “completely false” to claim that Europe now faces a migration threat due to the Afghan crisis.
“Asylum-seekers and migrants are no threat at all in the first place,” López Aguilar said. “They are posing a humanitarian challenge to the EU for a good reason, because we were involved in the country … so we need to be at the height, of the stature, of our values, of our laws and of our expected humanitarian response to those who have been vocal in opposing the Taliban regime and advocating for rights and freedoms in Afghanistan.”
About the author
Vince Chadwickvchadw
Vince Chadwick is a contributing reporter at Devex. A law graduate from Melbourne, Australia, he was social affairs reporter for The Age newspaper, before covering breaking news, the arts, and public policy across Europe, including as a reporter and editor at POLITICO Europe. He was long-listed for International Journalist of the Year at the 2023 One World Media Awards.
