India, Bangladesh in EU’s proposed list of ‘safe countries of origin’ as it seeks to tighten asylum laws

This would be EU’s first such list & include 5 other countries. The change would see asylum seekers from these countries have their applications excluded from the process generally.

Representational image: European Union flags flutter outside the European Commission headquarters in Brussels | Reuters

New Delhi: Seeking to tighten asylum rules, the European Commission has proposed to designate India as a “safe country of origin”, which would allow member-states to process and potentially reject asylum applications quicker. In the last half decade, there has been an almost 400 percent surge in Indians seeking asylum across the European Union.

The designation of a “safe country of origin” (SCO) in the context of refugee applications indicates that people fleeing from such a nation, in principle, should not receive international protection. This is because the countries from which the asylum seekers originate are considered to be generally safe.

Applications for refugee status from these countries are generally excluded from provision of asylum. The SCO tag allows countries receiving their applications to raise questions about the asylum claim, which requires the applicants to rebut.

“The Commission is also proposing to establish a first EU list of safe countries of origin. Some member states already have national lists of safe countries of origin…The Commission is proposing to establish a first EU list, covering Kosovo, Bangladesh, Colombia, Egypt, India, Morocco and Tunisia,” the European Commission said in its statement.

It added: “An EU list will complement these and support a more uniform application of the concept, which allows member states to process asylum claims of nationals from countries on the list in an accelerated procedure, on the basis that their claims are unlikely to be successful.”

It is now up to the Council and the Parliament in the European Union (EU) to agree to this proposal.

In 2024, an estimated 8,780 Indians applied for asylum across the 27 member-states of the EU, which is marginally less than the previous year, when 8,920 Indians sought asylum in the regional bloc, according to Eurostat. The number of Indians seeking asylum increased by almost 400 percent between 2020 and 2024.

In 2020, the number of Indian applicants for asylum in the EU stood at 2,810. The number surged to 26,410 applications in 2022. The majority of applicants that year were in Austria, which saw 20,045 Indians seek asylum in the heart of Europe. India is not on Austria’s national SCO list, which as of 2023, mentions 18 countries.

This trend is not unique to the EU. There has been a surge in Indians seeking asylum in other countries in the world, including New Zealand. Between 2020-21 and 2023-24, the number of refugee claims filed by Indians in New Zealand grew from 89 to 1,168, as previously reported by ThePrint.

While this would be the first EU-wide list, a number of member-states have their own national SCO lists. According to the European Union Agency for Asylum (EUAA), 19 EU nations have their own lists, while three other countries who are part of the larger European architecture—Norway, Switzerland and Iceland—have their own state lists.

If the proposal is accepted by all relevant EU institutions, asylum seekers from India in the EU will find their applications likely to be rejected. The EU has been struggling with a surge in asylum applications in the last decade, especially with the situation in Syria.

 

Asylum seekers in Europe

In 2024, however, the total number of first-time asylum applicants fell by 13 percent to roughly 912,000, from 1,049,500 in 2023. The three largest countries of origin for asylum seekers in Europe were Syria, Venezuela and Afghanistan in the last year.

Roughly 148,000 applications from Syrians were lodged in EU member states in 2024, while 72,775 applications were from Venezuelans and 72,155 from Afghans, according to Eurostat. While India is not in the top 15 originating countries between 2014 and 2024, Bangladesh is.

In 2024, 41,235 Bangladeshis sought asylum in the EU, according to Eurostat. If the Commission’s proposal is agreed to across the EU, then the likelihood of Bangladeshi asylum applications being accepted is drastically reduced to almost nil.

Similarly, Egypt, Colombia and Morocco are among the countries of origin of a big chunk of asylum seekers to Europe. The proposal would designate these countries as SCO’s, which would make a large number of asylum seekers almost ineligible for resettlement.

In 2024, 50,330 Colombians, 23,940 Egyptians and 22,630 Moroccans sought asylum in Europe, according to Eurostat. Overall, the acceptance of an EU-wide SCO, would hasten the processing of over a tenth of applications made in 2024 alone.

The total pending asylum applications within the EU stood at 1,241,660. The politics around migration and asylum seekers have had a number of implications within the EU member-states. Former German Chancellor Angela Merkel in 2015 welcomed over a million Syrian refugees, which helped aid the rise of the Alternative für Deutschland (AfD), a German Far-Right party, which has since grown into a leading opposition party in the Bundestag (Parliament of Germany).

Similarly, the Far-Right has seen a surge in France, with Marine Le Pen, the leader of the National Rally, leading the polls for the next French presidential elections in 2027, if she is eligible to run. In the Netherlands, Geert Wilders’ Party for Freedom, also considered a Far-Right political party in the country, is currently a part of the coalition government in The Hague.

(Edited by Mannat Chugh)