Recognition is not the only way a regime gains standing. Practice can do it too, and that is what happened when the EU met a Taliban delegation in Brussels on 23 June 2026. The five-member delegation, led by Taliban foreign ministry spokesperson Abdul Qahar Balkhi, did not meet officials inside an EU building. Instead, Belgium issued one-day visas, and restricted them to Belgian territory. The European Commission called the meeting 'technical' and stressed contact with Afghanistan’s 'de facto authorities,' not its government. Balkhi called it 'a historic visit.' Both descriptions cover the same room, but only one admits what is actually changing.

'Technical' is a busy little word. It turns an encounter with a regime whose leaders face ICC arrest warrants for gender persecution into paperwork and procedure. The EU has not recognised the Taliban, and says it will not. But standing does not require recognition. It can be built through practice, when other states keep treating a de facto authority as the body that gets things done.

Recognition and standing

Nearly five years of non-recognition has not touched Taliban control. Russia remains the only government to recognise them, yet the Taliban run the ministries, courts, prisons, borders and passport offices. They decide who studies, works, travels, or speaks. The EU’s benchmarks for engagement (human rights, humanitarian access, inclusive government) remain unmet. Whatever leverage non-recognition was meant to create has not manifested in Taliban conduct.

Nearly five years of non-recognition has not touched Taliban control. They still decide who studies, works, travels, or speaks

That suggests recognition is the wrong thing to watch. The Taliban do not just want flags and embassies. They want proof that European governments cannot get things done without them. Readmission cooperation gives them exactly that.

The readmission logic

The Brussels meeting had a paper trail. In October 2025, ministers from about 20 European governments wrote to the EU’s migration commissioner, pushing for coordinated returns to Afghanistan. Their case rested on a stark gap: in 2024, the EU issued 22,870 return orders to Afghans, but only 435 people actually left. Clearing that backlog became a political priority, and Brussels took charge of the file.

Readmission needs more than a decision, though. Someone has to confirm identity, issue travel documents, and receive people on arrival. In Afghanistan, that someone is the Taliban. This is normalisation by bureaucratic repetition: a contact point opens, a document channel starts working, a return procedure gets tested. None of it looks like recognition, and each round makes the next one easier to defend.

Careful staging

The EU clearly understands how this looks. The Commission called the Taliban 'de facto authorities,' never a government. The meeting venue stayed outside EU premises. Belgium limited the visas tightly. In public, the Commission said the talks concerned Afghans convicted of serious crimes or flagged as security risks. But the written invitation, seen by Euronews, said something broader: Afghan nationals with 'no right to stay in the EU,' and with no mention of crime at all. That gap between the public and private lines is what 'technical' is meant to hide.

The EU Commission claimed recent talks in Brussels with the Taliban concerned Afghans flagged as security risks. But a leaked written invitation revealed a much broader agenda, with no mention of crime

The contradiction also runs through EU institutions. On 21 May 2026, the European Parliament voted by 480 votes to five to demand enforcement of the ICC warrants, condemn the Taliban’s new Criminal Procedure Code and call for continued non-recognition. It opposed the Brussels invitation. Yet on 17 June, the same Parliament gave its approval to the new Return Regulation by 418 votes to 218; the agreed text, still awaiting the Council’s formal sign-off, explicitly permits contact with 'non-recognised third-country entities' for readmission purposes. Nobody deleted that provision. Parliament approved it, and the Brussels meeting followed six days later. It is tempting to call this hypocrisy, but it is better understood as a visible crack in the EU's reasoning: one part of the Union condemns normalisation while another writes the legal channel for it, a pattern the EU has built before in its dealings with other unrecognised authorities.

Where returns differ

None of this argues for cutting off contact altogether. Humanitarian access, detainee cases, evacuations, and protection for vulnerable Afghans all require some contact with Kabul. Refusing all engagement might seem principled, but it would not be a serious policy.

Returns sit on different ground. Humanitarian contact can be defended as harm reduction. Cooperating on readmission asks the Taliban to help remove people from Europe, and it builds a dependence that runs the wrong way, because each removal needs the Taliban’s consent.

The Taliban’s cumulative restrictions on Afghan women amount to persecution. That does not give every Afghan an automatic right to stay. But it rules out treating Afghanistan as an ordinary return destination

The law makes this harder to ignore. In October 2024, the Court of Justice of the European Union held that the Taliban’s cumulative restrictions on Afghan women can amount to persecution, and that gender and nationality may be sufficient grounds for protections without examining individual circumstances. That does not give every Afghan an automatic right to stay. But it rules out treating Afghanistan as an ordinary return destination, especially when the authority signing someone’s travel documents may be the same authority they fled.

What Europe stops seeing

The Taliban see the Brussels meeting differently, and Balkhi said as much: consular services for Afghans in Europe, trust-building measures and (though he didn't use these words) proof that European governments now have to deal with them. Brussels calls the same meeting narrow cooperation on returns. Both accounts are true. Only one is complete.

Standing grows this way. A Commission delegation visited Kabul in January. A formal invitation followed in May. Officials billed the June meeting as a follow-up, which by then is exactly what it was.

Europe has good reason to keep talking to whoever runs Afghanistan. Nobody seriously disputes that. What is worth arguing about is what Europe is willing to call technical, what kind of contact it allows to become routine, and what it stops noticing once that happens. Brussels gave the Taliban no flag and no embassy. It gave them a function instead, and functions have a way of outlasting the caution of the people who created them.

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