On Monday, Chancellor Karl Nehammer commissioned Interior Minister Gerhard Karner (both ÖVP) to suspend all ongoing Syrian asylum applications and to review all grants of asylum. “In this context, I have instructed the ministry to prepare an orderly return and deportation program to Syria,” said Karner, according to a broadcast. At the same time, family reunification will also be suspended. After the upheaval in Syria It is still unclear whether, when and how many people who fled from there to Austria could return to their old homeland. After the fall of the regime of ruler Bashar al-Assad, interim Prime Minister Bashir called on Syrians who had left their homeland since the start of the civil war in 2011 to return.
