Euroviews. Normalising al-Assad’s regime is against Europe’s interests

As someone who witnessed the tragic consequences of conflict, genocide and forced displacement in the Balkans, every time an attempt is made to normalise relations with a dictator fuelling a decade-long war marked by repression, ethnic cleansing and major war crimes, it leaves me questioning who thought that would be anything but the worst possible idea.

Yet, Italian Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani and his Austrian counterpart Alexander Schallenberg have just called for a change in Europe’s strategy toward Syria — specifically suggesting the normalisation of relations with the regime of Bashar al-Assad.

Their words, published in the Italian press, echo a call joined by six other countries —Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Greece, Slovakia, Slovenia and Croatia — facing increasing domestic political pressures to act against the increasing refugee flows toward Europe.

Their demands will be discussed in a meeting of all 27 EU member states on 13 September.

Informed by Bosnia’s painful history and years of work studying the Syrian crisis, I must warn that normalising relations with al-Assad would have disastrous consequences, especially in terms of refugee return and stability of Europe.

Legitimising a regime that has systematically destroyed its own population and which continues to pose a threat to both the Syrian people and European security will result in more refugees reaching European borders, not less.

The position articulated by the eight European governments seems to suggest that normalising relations with al-Assad could facilitate the return of Syrian refugees, thus easing the pressure on Europe.

This argument is fundamentally flawed. Syrian refugees are not simply economic migrants who can be coaxed back with promises of