The European Commission has promised Lebanon financial aid totalling around €1 billion ($1.07 billion) in order to stop the flow into the European Union of refugees from Syria currently living there.
"To underline our support, I can announce a financial package of €1 billion for Lebanon that would be available from this year until 2027," European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said in Beirut on Thursday, after talks with caretaker Lebanese Prime Minister Najib Mikati and Cypriot President Nikos Christodoulides.
The package aims to strengthen Lebanon's education, social protection and health service and will also support the armed forces, mainly through equipment and training, plus infrastructure for border management.
"We refuse to let our homeland become an alternative homeland,” Mikati said, underlining that Beirut appreciates the EU's help.
"No one wants the Syrian refugees to be able to come home [more] than us, together with the partners and their host communities," a commission spokesman said. "What is important for us is that these people can return to safe conditions."
Mikati agreed, saying, "What is required, as a first stage, is European and international recognition that most of the Syrian regions have become safe, which will facilitate the process of returning the displaced."
Syrians from Lebanon, which is some 160 kilometres from Cyprus, have been arriving almost daily by boat in the EU island republic in recent months. Around 4,000 migrants have already been counted since the beginning of the year, compared to just 78 in the first quarter of the previous year, according to Christodoulides.
In absolute numbers, this is significantly fewer than in Italy, Spain and Greece, for example, where boat refugees from countries such as Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, Morocco and Turkey arrive. But in relation to its population, nowhere else in the EU receives as many asylum applications as Cyprus, whose refugee camps are overcrowded.
Christodoulides and von der Leyen also met Parliamentary Speaker Nabih Berri, a close ally of the pro-Iranian Hezbollah movement.
Lebanon, struggling amid deep economic crisis since 2019, is now hosting some 805,000 UN-registered Syrian refugees, of whom 90% live in poverty, according to the UN’s refugee agency UNHCR. Lebanese officials estimate that the actual number is far higher, ranging between 1.5 million and 2 million.
The boats bring mainly Syrian refugees fleeing their war-torn country who have lived in camps across Lebanon since the Syrian uprising began in 2011.
Nicosia has lobbied for months to extend aid to Lebanon similar to deals the EU has done with Turkey, Tunisia, and more recently, Egypt. Those deals have provided billions in exchange for keeping migrants out of the EU.
But Lebanon is different, critics say.
Unlike the authoritarian states of Tunisia and Egypt, Lebanon does not even have a head of state. Electing a president proved impossible for a year and a half due to power struggles among the political elite.
The country is currently led by Mikati, but the government is only able to act to a limited extent.
“The EU is making a big mistake in Lebanon,” said Riad Kahwaji, director of the Institute for Near East and Gulf Military Analysis, citing the country's long history of internal problems, driven by sectarian conflicts, which are causing the power vacuum.
Human rights activists say Lebanese officials have been discriminatory against Syrians for years, trying to force them to return to Syria or leave Lebanon, pointing to the devastating economic crisis.
Human Rights Watch (HRW) reported that in recent months, Lebanese authorities have arbitrarily arrested, tortured and sent Syrians - including opposition activists and army defectors - back to Syria.
Some Lebanese politicians however say Syria is safe enough to guarantee a return. The United Nations and other human rights organizations meanwhile say international observers are needed to return Syrians safely back to Syria.
"The Syrians who were forced to come to Lebanon due to the atrocities of the Syrian regime of Bashar al-Assad and his Iranian allies and their proxies they do not want to have Lebanon as alternative homeland at all," said Yahya Aridi, a key Syrian opposition figure and former spokesman for the opposition Syrian Negotiation Commission. He demanded safety for Syrians returning to their homeland.
Syria is safe and many amnesties have been called to encourage those to return who were involved in the uprising, Syrian lawmaker Nasser al-Nasser told dpa.
He called on the international community to help rebuild Syria.