Germany and Austria freeze Syrian asylum applications, local media report

The decision comes as millions of refugees are now able to return to Syria following the fall of al-Assad's regime.

Transcript

00:00Germany and Austria have put a hold on processing Syrian asylum applications as Syria's political

00:08future is currently too uncertain, local media have reported.

00:13The decision comes as millions of refugees are now able to return to Syria following

00:17the fall of al-Assad's regime.

00:20You have to assume that the rebels who have won now have close relations to Afghanistan,

00:28to the Taliban, these are not good signs.

00:31That means today, at the moment, it is absolutely too early to predict whether it means that

00:38more people will return to Syria or whether more people will come to us.

00:43To be honest, I am shocked that just a few hours after the fall of this bad regime

00:49in Damascus, Germany is speculating about it, or is being directly asked, we still have

00:54to talk about deportation.

00:55I think this is more than cynical and, to be honest, also populist and it is very much

00:59about the lives of many German Syrians and people who come from this region.

01:04Local authorities said over 47,000 applications were affected by the application freeze in

01:09Germany, but that there was no impact on existing applications which were already decided on.

01:15In Austria, 7,300 applications were affected.

01:19That was confirmed by the Interior Ministry to local media.