ATHENS — Hundreds of Syrian refugees gathered in downtown Athens on Sunday to celebrate the fall of the Assad regime, but for the multitudes of Syrian asylum seekers in Europe the party may be short-lived

Greece joined other EU countries including notably Germany and Austria in implementing an immediate freeze on asylum requests from Syrians already present in the respective countries; in Greece that amounts to around 9,000 applications.  

Britain’s Home Office on Monday also confirmed that it had “temporarily paused decisions on Syrian asylum claims whilst we assess the current situation.”

Adding to the confusion, at least on the Continent, is that some Syrians might actually want to return to Syria of their own accord.

In the meantime, sentiment is building in the heart of Europe to deport  Syrian migrants. On Monday the vice-chairman of Germany’s center-right Christian Democratic Union’s parliamentary group, Jens Spahn, told the television program Frühstart , or “Early Start”, that  “As a first step, I would say we’ll make an offer: How about if the federal government says ‘we’ll charter planes for anyone who wants to go back to Syria, and they’ll get an initial payment of one thousand euros.’”

The second step, at least as Mr. Spahn sees it, would be for Germany to organize a “reconstruction and return conference” with the participation of  Austria, Turkey, and Jordan, and that  “When things return to normal in the home country, there will be an expectation that they will also return.”

Germany’s interior minister, Nancy Faeser of the center-left Social Democratic Party, doesn’t share Mr. Spahn’s view. Herr Faeser told the newspaper Bild that “the end of Assad’s tyranny finally gives many Syrian refugees hope of being able to return to their homeland. But the situation is still too confusing and volatile, and concrete options for return are not yet foreseeable.”

Austria’s prime minister, Karl Nehammer, has already instructed the interior ministry to suspend all current asylum applications from Syria. Mr. Nehammer also favors deportation: “In this context, I have instructed the ministry to prepare a coordinated return and deportation program to Syria,” he told Die Welt. 

At the beginning of 2024, there were  95,180 Syrians living in Austria, with 12,871 asylum applications being submitted from January through last month.

On Monday, Germany’s federal office for migration and refugees, or BAMF,  halted asylum requests from Syrian nationals. The freeze will immediately impact 47,270 asylum applications from Syrians for which decisions have not yet been made.

There are already nearly one million Syrians living in Germany, the number peaking in 2015 at the height of Syria’s civil war. Of these, 321,444 have refugee status and 329,242 enjoy something called “subsidiary protection” status — meaning they have neither refugee protection nor asylum status, but could, according to immigration authorities, risk  suffering serious harm in their country of origin.

Many Syrian migrants in Germany have been linked to crime, and as the government has wrestled with the problem of the failure of migrants to integrate — a pattern that on repeat across much of Europe —  anti-immigrant political parties have gained ground. 

Europeans are watching events as they unfold in Syria, but the television reports showing internally displaced Syrians start to make their way back to Damascus, newly free of the Assad clan’s decades–long grip, could fuel the nascent appetite for more deportations. 

In this respect the EU member country that is nearest to Syria, Cyprus, might be something of a bellwether. On Monday Cyprus’s immigration minister, Nicholas Ioannides, said that an unspecified number  of Syrian nationals currently in Cyprus are already eyeing a return to their home country.

That kind of momentum flies in the face of some reports that after the weekend’s events Europe could face a fresh influx of refugees.

According to Greek language press reports,  Mr. Ioannides said that by the early afternoon 20 individuals had withdrawn their asylum requests, while there are also Syrians that have obtained protection status which they are now seeking to revoke so as to return to Syria. 

There is little doubt that upheaval in the Middle East is already reverberating on the Continent.  As happened at Athens, crowds of Syrians gathered in the streets of the  Cypriot cities of Limassol and the divided capital, Nicosia, on Sunday to cheer the fall of Assad. 

For many of those individuals, after watching 13 years of civil war play out in Syria , the prospect of finally going home — possibly even on their own terms —  is today more real than ever.  

Mr. Ioannides told the Cypriot news agency CNA that he is expecting to see more requests from Syrian nationals who want to withdraw their asylum applications. To what extent that dynamic will play out in other European countries like Germany remains to be seen.