The European Union on Wednesday issued updated guidance for asylum applications by Syrian nationals that reflects new conditions in Syria a year after the fall of Bashar al-Assad. The changes may influence the result of asylum requests of some 110,000 Syrians who were still awaiting an asylum decision at the end of September.
The European Union Agency for Asylum said opponents of al-Assad and military service evaders “are no longer at risk of persecution.”
But the agency said other groups may be considered at risk in the post-al-Assad Syria, including people affiliated with the former government and minorities.
While decisions on asylum applications are made at a national level, the agency’s guidance is used to inform the 27 EU member states, as well as Norway and Switzerland. The goal is to create greater coherence between the 29 nations granting international protection.
The number of Syrians requesting asylum dropped significantly from 16,000 in October 2024, before the fall of al-Assad, to 3,500 in September 2025. Still, Syrians had the most number of cases awaiting a decision at first instance.
Syria’s conflict that began in March 2011 killed nearly half a million people and displaced half the country’s pre-war population of 23 million. More than five million Syrians fled the country as refugees. While most sought refuge in neighboring countries like Turkey, many also went to Europe, contributing to the continent’s refugee crisis in 2015.
The asylum agency said the situation in Syria is “considered improved but volatile” since al-Assad’s fall in December 2024, and that “indiscriminate violence continues to take place” in certain parts of Syria.
Many Syrians had high hopes after al-Assad was brought down in an offensive by insurgent groups in early December. However, sectarian killings against members of al-Assad’s Alawite minority sect in Syria’s coastal region and against the Druze minority in the southern province of Sweida earlier this year has claimed hundreds of lives.
Still, the agency said it now considers Damascus, the capital, to be safe.
Since the fall of al-Assad in December, more than one million people have returned to Syria and nearly two million internally displaced people have returned to their regions, according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.
With The Associated Press
