SVR on the further development of EU asylum policy: Abandoning the connection criterion raises human rights concerns

The European Parliament and the European Council have agreed on two legislative acts that will further develop the Common European Asylum System, which will come into force in June 2026. Firstly, there will be a list of safe countries of origin that is binding for all EU member states, and secondly, the connection criterion that has so far applied in the concept of safe third countries will be abolished. The Expert Council for Integration and Migration (SVR) welcomes the agreement on a common list of safe countries of origin, but is critical of the departure from the connection criterion.

Berlin, 12 February 2026. “Watering down the connection criterion will make it possible in future to send people to a non-EU country to which they have no link. This is a significant change that massively restricts the interests and rights of those seeking protection with regard to their place of residence and that significantly alters the concept of the safe third country,” explains Professor Dr Winfried Kluth, Chairperson of the SVR. “It is particularly worrying if people are transferred to third countries without a prior individual human rights assessment. Sending people to third countries with which they have no connection and which in some cases may even be on another continent, is a serious encroachment on their right to choose their place of residence. Germany has defended the connection requirement for good reasons up to now, but is now making a U-turn. The requirements of the European Convention on Human Rights must therefore be complied with all the more strictly in order to ensure due process in third countries.”

SVR welcomes the decision to impose stricter requirements as regards the transparency and legal basis of agreements or arrangements with third countries. The Member States and the European Parliament should be informed at an early stage when the European Commission enters into negotiations with a potential safe third country on behalf of the Union. Agreements or arrangements concluded by the EU with third countries should also take precedence over bilateral arrangements between individual Member States and third countries.

The changes to the connection criterion are also a preparatory step ahead of the Return Regulation, which is to be negotiated between the Council and the Parliament during the course of the year. According to the European Commission’s draft, the regulation sets out to introduce a stringent common return procedure for third-country nationals who do not have the right to stay. The draft regulation explicitly allows for the transfer of such persons to countries that are willing to accept them, even if the individuals concerned have no previous connection to those countries, have never been there, and have no family members there. “Here, too, we expect major challenges for the EU and its Member States in effectively enforcing the principle of non-refoulement,” says the SVR Chairperson. “Even if third countries are found that are declared safe and are willing to accept failed asylum seekers from the EU under an agreement, who will check that those seeking protection are then not sent on to a country where they face torture, inhuman treatment, or serious human rights violations? The principle of non-refoulement and the prohibition of collective expulsion would be very difficult to monitor. In addition, access to effective legal safeguards must also be guaranteed on a permanent basis,” Professor Kluth points out.

The SVR, on the other hand, welcomes the agreement between the European Parliament and the Council on the creation of Union list of safe countries of origin. “The proposed regulation represents an important step towards harmonization in the Common European Asylum System, as for the first time all Member States are obliged to consider certain countries of origin as safe and to expedite asylum procedures accordingly. The common list, which will initially include Kosovo, Bangladesh, Colombia, Egypt, India, Morocco, and Tunisia, is therefore an important signal at EU level,” says the SVR Chairperson. “It can help to better manage migration from these countries, for which recognition rates are extremely low. At the same time, it can help to maintain support in the EU for refugee protection from the world’s crisis regions.” Member States may continue to use their own lists of safe countries of origin, as Germany does. In the long term, however, the Expert Council believes that the goal should be to define safe countries of origin exclusively at EU level.

The SVR also welcomes the Parliament’s proposed amendments to introduce effective criteria to determine whether or not a country is to remain on the list of safe countries of origin. “It is important that there be a clear procedure to regularly review whether the classification as a safe country of origin is still justified. There must be a transparent, reliable, and coherent basis for decisions on which countries are included in the list must. It is therefore good that the European Parliament sets out clear qualitative and quantitative criteria in this regard and assigns a monitoring function to the Commission and the EU Agency for Asylum, while also explicitly referring to candidate countries for EU membership. After all, the latter cannot be considered safe without question,” says Professor Kluth.

Background:
With their decisions of 10 February 2026, the members of the European Parliament pave the way for the creation of a list of safe countries of origin in asylum procedures that is binding for all EU Member States. The European Parliament has also upheld a political agreement reached between the negotiators of the Danish EU Council Presidency and the European Parliament at the end of December 2025 to allow for greater leeway in applying the “safe third country” concept. Following the Parliament’s decisions, the European Council must still approve the final legal texts. The aim of these reforms is to speed up returns and increase the return rate of rejected asylum seekers in the EU.

Until now, people could only be transferred to a country other than their country of origin if they had lived there for a period of time or had family links there. Under the new rules, such a connection is no longer mandatory; in future, simply transiting through the third country in question will suffice. Alternatively, people can also be transferred to a non-EU country if there is an agreement or arrangement with that country. This may involve so-called return hubs, which could be set up in third countries: persons without the right to stay in the EU or rejected asylum seekers could be transferred to a return hub and from there to their country of origin or another host country. This will give return hubs and arrangements between the EU or individual Member States and third countries that agree to accept people seeking protection and, if necessary, to carry out asylum procedures in accordance with international law, a legal basis in European secondary law, i.e., in decisions, directives, and regulations that are subordinate to the EU treaties.

The press release is available for download at this link.

This is a machine translation of the original German document. The text was then checked by a human. Only the wording of the original version is authoritative.

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About the Expert Council
The Expert Council on Integration and Migration is an independent and interdisciplinary body providing research-based policy advice. Its reports aim to assist those bodies responsible for integration and migration policy, as well as the general public, in their opinion-forming processes. The interdisciplinary Expert Council currently comprises eight researchers: Prof. Dr Winfried Kluth (Chairperson), Prof. Dr Birgit Glorius (Deputy Chairperson), Prof. Dr Dr Rauf Ceylan, Prof. Dr Havva Engin, Prof. Dr Marc Helbling, Prof. Sandra Lavenex, Ph. D., Prof. Dr Annekatrin Niebuhr, Prof. Dr Hannes Schammann.