The European Commission says it will not compromise on protecting the EU’s external borders, but will also respect human rights, while declining to specify if a new emergency rule could suspend people’s basic right to asylum.

The vague statements by Magnus Brunner, the EU home affairs commissioner, in Brussels on Tuesday (29 September), followed an equally vague proposal announced by commission president Ursula von der Leyen in her State of the Union speech on 11 September, who pledged to create a “European emergency response framework”.

When asked if her new framework would include the possibility to suspend asylum at the EU’s external border in cases that mirrored this summer’s Ceuta crisis, when tens of thousands of people entered the Spanish enclave in north Africa, Brunner said: “I can’t go into details, because it’s a discussion which is going on at the moment”.

His non-committal take on the hot button issue also came after a resolution adopted by the centre-right European People’s Party (EPP) in Brussels on Tuesday, which is demanding that member countries, in some cases, be given the option to temporarily suspend asylum applications.

Specifically, it calls on the EU “to adopt legislative measures authorising refusal of entry or returns without individual asylum procedures for illegal migrants used in a hybrid attack”.

Meanwhile, Brunner and von der Leyen come from the same conservative party in the EPP, posing questions to what extent political pressure has influenced the latest commission initiative.

Greece’s prime minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis (also EPP) in early August had already gone public with demands for new EU rules allowing for asylum to be suspended for newly arrived people.

The Polish government (EPP) also weighed in, claiming credit for getting von der Leyen to cite the idea in her big speech.

Warsaw had earlier this month extended its asylum ban on people entering from Belarus, in what rights groups say involves pushbacks that cause loss of life.

But for Brunner, the issue had already been broached in a commission asylum strategy report that was published back in January.

That report references “weaponisation of migration” by hostile countries, such as Belarus and Russia, and links it back to another commission document from December 2024 that argues there are certain exceptional situations in which the ban on pushbacks cannot apply.

For Michael O’Flaherty, who is the human rights commissioner at the Council of Europe, a rights watchdog based in Strasbourg, any effort to extend the existing EU ban criteria risked unraveling decades of human rights law.

The issue will be discussed by EU interior ministers on Thursday and Friday in Luxembourg, where migration weighs heavily on the agenda.

And those talks, in turn, will lean into and continue among heads of state and government at an EU summit on 15 October.

German investigators have linked an arson attack in Munich, the planned sabotage of drone manufacturer Skyeton near Prešov, and an attempted attack using an explosive drone at Leipzig-Halle Airport to Russia’s military intelligence agency, the GRU, according to media reports.

The most important finding is that part of this network was said to have operated from Slovakia.

We do not yet know all the details of the ongoing investigation, and I trust that Slovak security authorities will thoroughly examine the circumstances of the case and determine the true scope of the entire operation.

However, according to the German security services’ findings so far, the Slovak connection is not marginal.

Slovakia may have served as one of the hubs of a wider network linked to Russia’s military intelligence agency, the GRU.

According to German security sources, two Bulgarian nationals detained after the arson attack in Munich on 3 September were part of a GRU-linked group operating from Slovakia. Incendiary devices were thrown near Rohde & Schwarz and Helsing, companies linked to the defence industry and support for Ukraine.

The same wider network was said to have been preparing an arson attack on Skyeton’s plant near Prešov, which produces reconnaissance drones for Ukraine. Slovak authorities thwarted the plan and detained Latvian and Ukrainian nationals. Another suspect was detained in Germany.

The nationality of those carrying out the attacks is not decisive.

The current model of Russian operations uses nationals of different countries, often recruited through intermediaries. A professional GRU officer can therefore remain several layers removed from the attack itself. Recruitment may take place via Telegram, payments through cryptocurrencies, and those carrying out the attacks may not even know precisely who the real instigator is.

German investigators argued there was also a link to an attempted attack using an explosive drone at Leipzig-Halle Airport on 4 August.

The target was reportedly a Ukrainian cargo aircraft used to transport material. The German government subsequently publicly attributed responsibility for the incident to Russia.

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