European governments' increasingly strict immigration policies will pressure Syrian refugees to leave, but many will likely stay, fueling anti-immigrant protests, intercommunal clashes and extremist threats, especially in countries with significant refugee populations like Germany and France. On Dec. 9, just one day after the Assad regime collapsed in Syria in the face of a rebel offensive led by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, Berlin announced a freeze on processing asylum applications. Following that decision, several European countries — including Denmark, Sweden, Belgium, Greece, Italy, the United Kingdom and Norway — took similar steps, while France announced on Dec. 10 that it is postponing reviews of asylum applications. Lawmakers in Germany — which hosts the greatest number of Syrian refugees, approximately 975,000, from the country's civil war — proposed paying Syrians to take charter flights back to their home country. These lawmakers included Christian Democratic Union member of parliament Jens Spahn, whose party will likely lead the next German government. Austria, which hosts about 100,000 Syrians, announced Dec. 19 that it will review the status of Syrian migrants who arrived less than five years ago.

• In its midyear review published in September, the European Union Agency for Asylum reported that EU countries received 513,000 asylum applications in the first half of 2024. Syrians accounted for the largest share, making up 14% of all applications — an increase of 7 percentage points compared to the same timeframe in 2023. The report also noted that approximately 101,000 Syrian asylum applications remain unresolved within EU countries.
• Since the onset of the Syrian Civil War in 2011, approximately 4.5 million Syrians have sought refuge in Europe. Between 2015 and 2023, nearly 1.3 million Syrians were granted international protection within the European Union. After Germany, Sweden hosts the most Syrians, with approximately 100,000 residing there.

The collapse of the Assad regime presents an opportunity for European governments to reduce their Syrian refugee populations, whose presence in many countries has helped to fuel the rise of far-right and nationalist movements in recent years. In the past few years, EU countries like France, Belgium, Germany and Netherlands, among others, have refrained from reestablishing diplomatic ties with the Assad regime over its dire human rights track record, complicating EU states' ability to return Syrian refugees to their home country. Instead, European countries focused their efforts on getting refugees to remain in states neighboring Syria like Lebanon, Turkey and Jordan, which are already burdened by fragile economies and mounting societal tensions, to prevent them from arriving in Europe. Despite these efforts, the influx of refugees into Europe since 2011 has had profound political ramifications, helping to fuel the rise of far-right and nationalist movements across the Continent, with parties like Germany's Alternative for Germany and France's National Rally surging in the polls, while parties like Italy's Brothers of Italy and the Netherlands' Party for Freedom have won national elections on anti-immigration platforms. Moreover, countries like Hungary and Poland adopted hard-line stances at the outset of the crisis against refugee resettlement, leveraging public fears to consolidate nationalist narratives and protect their borders. With the Assad regime toppled by the rebels, European governments now see a chance to reduce the presence of Syrian migrants, and at the very least prevent another influx of refugees towards Europe, helping them resolve existing — and prevent future — domestic political crises.

• In 2016, the European Union and Turkey signed an agreement that involved Brussels providing significant financial aid in exchange for Turkey curbing refugee flows into Greece and subsequently Central Europe, aiming to prevent migrants from reaching EU borders. These measures provided short-term relief but failed to resolve the underlying issue.
• On May 2, 2024, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen unveiled a 1 billion-euro (about $1.03 million) aid package for Lebanon in response to a growing influx of Syrian refugees traveling from Lebanon to Cyprus. The agreement is similar to previous EU deals with Tunisia and Egypt, where the European Union provides financial assistance and enhanced border management support in exchange for efforts by the host countries to curb irregular migration to Europe.

European governments will progressively gauge Syrians' willingness to return home, preparing plans for eventual voluntary returns, though it will be difficult to convince Syrians who have built lives in Europe to return to a country with many lingering problems. European countries are likely to pursue a cautious and multifaceted approach toward Syrian refugee repatriation, balancing domestic political pressures from anti-immigration factions with their human rights obligations and the complex realities on the ground in Syria. This is especially likely in countries with high refugee concentrations and where far-right parties lead or a part of coalition governments — like Finland, Italy, the Netherlands and Sweden, and soon Austria — or where center-right governments are embracing increasingly stringent migration and asylum policies in a bid to stem the rise in popularity of far-right opposition parties, like France, Germany and Greece. Initially, European governments will explore voluntary repatriation schemes, creating incentive structures to encourage returns while subtly tightening asylum policies to increase pressure on these refugees to leave. For instance, measures such as reduced financial support or stricter language requirements could make remaining in host countries less viable for refugees. Given Syria's ongoing fragility — marked by high poverty, a likely turbulent political transition and lingering violent threats from numerous armed groups — in addition to the fact that many refugees have been in Europe for many years and established new lives there, mass returns in the near term are unlikely. While some refugees in European countries may express interest in rebuilding their homeland, particularly if they were supporters of opposition factions, others who were supporters of Assad or minorities like Christians or Alawites may perceive the risks of persecution as too high and thus aim to stay in Europe. If not, many will likely view Syria as still too dangerous to return to, at least initially.

• Recent diplomatic engagements with Hayat Tahrir al-Sham by representatives of EU countries, like the visits to Damascus by the foreign ministers of Germany, France and Italy, signal a strategic effort to mitigate any future refugee waves by beginning a process of political normalization and economic reconstruction so refugees can return.
• On Jan. 6, Austrian President Alexander Van der Bellen tasked Herbert Kickl, leader of the far-right Freedom Party, with forming a new government following the collapse of coalition talks between centrist parties. This means that a far right-led government in Austria will most likely prioritize a deportation plan for migrants in the long term while tightening asylum and migration policies in the short term. 

In the longer term, should stability begin to return to Syria and anti-immigration stances continue to proliferate across Europe, European countries will likely adopt increasingly stringent asylum and immigration policies, strong-arming Syrians to return. With European governments wary of growing far-right sentiments and jihadist threats emanating from large Syrian and other refugee populations, a Syria that is eventually stable would likely prompt European governments to make asylum and immigration policies much tougher on Syrian refugees and immigrants generally. This is likely to include tougher barriers to citizenship for Syrians and heightened efforts to pressure illegal migrants to leave, such as security crackdowns to determine their immigration status. In that case, the growing influence of far-right movements in Europe will likely continue shaping the policy agendas of governments in the coming years. Consequently, European policymaking on issues like border control, refugee resettlement and integration would be more likely to harden and coerce more Syrians to return, regardless of their desire.

If Syrian refugees hesitate to return despite government pressure, anti-immigrant sentiment will likely grow, sparking protests, clashes between political groups and a higher risk of extremist attacks, especially in countries like Germany and France with large immigrant populations. Despite European governments progressively implementing stricter policies toward refugees, especially in the event of a stable Syria, far-right parties are likely to demand more, especially amid likely new waves of refugees from a fragmented Syria and the reluctance of many Syrians already present in Europe to return. In this case, the far right is likely to organize more protests in countries like Germany, France, Italy with large refugee populations, and further harass and attack migrants, with far-right groups exploiting public frustrations. Concurrently, protests defending migrant rights, led by left-wing groups and migrants themselves, are likely to increase the probability of clashes between opposing factions as they mobilize their response. Meanwhile, with the jihadist extremist threat in Europe growing in the past year due to the Israel-Hamas War and many European governments' support of Israel, as well as the rising anti-immigration sentiments there, if governments escalate measures to expel refugees, the risk of extremist attacks is likely to grow as a subset of refugees facing deportation would be at risk of carrying out attacks, as seen multiple times in recent years. Jihadist groups like the Islamic State would likely use this environment of heightened friction between Syrian refugees and European governments to recruit disillusioned individuals or inspire retaliatory attacks, raising the risk of more frequent — and potentially successful — jihadist attacks in Europe.

• Potential jihadist attacks or attempts are more likely to occur in European countries like Belgium, France, Germany and the Netherlands, where there are large Syrian and Muslim refugee populations and growing far-right sentiment — factors that encourage extremist groups to encourage refugees to launch attacks by citing ideological, political and religious reasons.
• A Syrian refugee who became affiliated with the Islamic State after his asylum application was denied and he faced deportation killed three people with a knife Aug. 23, 2024, in the German town of Solingen, underscoring the link in some cases between asylum rejections and extremist attacks. This incident illustrates how the Islamic State could capitalize on such vulnerabilities to incite or influence jihadist attacks across Europe.