Greece Reviews Asylum Status for Syrians and Afghans After Conflicts End

Greek authorities reopened 1,200 Syrian asylum cases in February and are reviewing dozens more from Afghanistan this year. The reviews target recipients whose home-country conflicts have ended, including Syria's civil war in December 2024 and Afghanistan's Taliban victory in August 2021. Migration Minister Thanos Plevris announced the reopening of revocable cases in February.

At a parliamentary committee hearing he stated: "There are countries with which we don’t have common values, and that’s mainly because of religion, let’s be clear, it’s because of hardcore Islam. " Greece is home to 3 million migrants including more than 137,000 asylum or international-protection recipients. More than a million asylum seekers crossed its borders in 2015.

Last year Greece revoked asylum for almost 200 people, compared with 400 revocations in the prior decade. In September 2025 it adopted what Plevris called "the strictest returns policy in the whole EU," allowing imprisonment for refused deportations, ankle monitors, two-week voluntary departure deadlines, and fines up to 5,000 euros plus two-to-five-year confinement for non-compliance.

Bashir, a Syrian Muslim granted asylum in Greece in 2015, received a notice two months ago asking him to restate his reasons for arrival and explain why he should not return.

He has lived in Greece since 2014, married there, and had a son three months ago after working in olive and orange picking and metalwork. "It’s a catastrophe," he told Al Jazeera. " His lawyer, Angeliki Theodoropoulou of the Greek Council for Refugees, said only men from Syria and Afghanistan are receiving notices.

She noted that renewed clashes between the Syrian government and Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces occurred earlier this year, and Israel has continued sporadic attacks. "We don’t understand on what criteria they decided Syria is safe," Bashir said. Jihad, who has lived legally in Greece since 2001 and runs a clothes shop, fears return because his family supported the former Assad regime.

"If they just look at my Facebook page or look at things I wrote in the past, they will send me to jail for sure," he said. Both men have clean records, pay taxes, and say they would leave for another country rather than return. Greece suspended asylum applications for mainly Muslim arrivals from Libya for three months last year.

In February the governing New Democracy party passed a law under which any aid worker charged with smuggling can cause their entire organization to be removed from the ministry registry, risking loss of funding and camp access. The European Union’s Asylum and Migration Pact takes effect next month and requires member states to manage hard-border and returns policies.

Kristin Fabbe of the European University Institute told a Delphi Economic Forum event that Europe has not yet figured out how to execute returns at scale, a bottleneck she said will shape implementation of the pact.