14 European Union countries including Germany have pledged to take in some 40,000 people from Afghanistan.
This was confirmed by EU Commissioner for Home Affairs, Ylva Johansson after a meeting with EU interior ministers.
Johansson said: “15 EU member states have pledged to give protection to almost 40,000 Afghans.”
“This goes hand in hand with better measures to deal with irregular migration and how we move forward on ”MigrationEU.”
Johansson added that Germany alone was ready to accept 25,000 refugees from Afghanistan, noting that the 15 member countries have already evacuated around 28,000 people from Afghanistan in the past few months.
The 40,000 now mentioned are additional evacuees and the figure is actually 38,146.
A total of 60,000 Afghans accepted admission places in EU countries for 2021 and 2022 but the number does not only apply to Afghanistan.
Around two thirds of the 60,000 are earmarked for Afghans needing protection.
Speaking on why the EU states decided not to make any concrete commitments to accept people from Afghanistan after the Taliban came to power at the end of August.
Johansson stated that it was done to avoid creating incentives for illegal migration and now the current situation in Afghanistan is dramatic.
According to him, the country was suffering from one of the worst droughts in two decades adding that more than half of the population does not have enough to eat.
“The economy was battered before the Taliban came to power and is now in free fall.”