France is holding “technical discussions” with Afghanistan’s Taliban authorities on returning Afghan irregular migrants, its interior minister said Monday.
“We are trying to obtain the possibility to return a certain number of Afghans who are in an irregular situation. The talks focused on cracking down on irregular migration and on boosting deportations. France does not formally recognise, or maintain diplomatic relations with, the Taliban government formed after the armed group took power in 2021. A meeting in Brussels in June between a Taliban delegation and officials from 15 EU countries was condemned by several rights groups and leftwing European Parliament lawmakers.
These are technical discussions,” Laurent Nunez told the French parliament. “Other countries are doing this, Germany is doing this,” he said. AFP first reported in early October that, according to a French diplomatic source, France had begun talks with the Taliban government to “facilitate” the deportation of Afghans to Afghanistan. A “certain number” of Afghans “might constitute threats to public order, so it is my priority to see that we are able to deport these people”, Nunez said. One lawmaker, Lea Balage El Mariky, with The Ecologists party, accused the French government of “starting the normalisation of diplomatic relations with a regime that is committing a crime against humanity” by what she called “gender apartheid”.
