Thursday

23rd Mar 2023

Too many Ukrainian refugees in Poland, EU says

  • Out of the 3.8 million refugees from Ukraine that have fled, only around 800,000 have so far applied for temporary protection in the EU (Photo: European Union, 2022)
Listen to article

The EU is pressing to get Ukrainian refugees to leave Poland and go to other member states.

The demand comes as some 3.8 million have fled Ukraine, with Poland currently hosting more than any EU state.

Read and decide

Join EUobserver today

Become an expert on Europe

Get instant access to all articles — and 20 years of archives. 14-day free trial.

... or subscribe as a group

The UN refugee agency (UNHCR) says Poland has taken in over 2 million refugees. Of those more than 1.5 million remain in Poland, said EU home affairs commissioner Ylva Johansson.

"It is important to incentivise Ukrainians to leave Poland to go to other members," she told reporters on Monday (28 March) ahead of a meeting of interior ministers, noting that some 1 million have fanned out to other EU states.

It is not immediately clear how the EU plans on getting them to leave Poland. But a proposal by Germany and Poland seeks to give each Ukrainian refugee a flat fee of €1,000 for the first six months.

Johansson remained vague on whether the commission would support such an idea, noting instead that they are looking at how to inform those in Poland that they will receive the same rights elsewhere.

She also said the commission is looking at how to make EU funds immediately available to member states bordering Ukraine, plus possibly additional funds later on.

Out of the 3.8 million refugees from Ukraine that have fled, only around 800,000 have so far applied for temporary protection in the EU, she said.

The protection is an EU scheme that gives Ukrainian refugees residency and working rights up until next March.

France and Greece have each registered 15,000, said their interior ministers on Monday. That's more than double those registered in Hungary.

According to the UNHCR, some 350,000 Ukrainians went to Hungary. But of those, just under 6,000 registered in Hungary as of 23 March.

Austria by comparison has registered some 35,000 and Ireland around 13,500.

The EU wants to get a better idea on where people are settling in order to determine needs.

This includes centralising at the EU level, national registration schemes.

It also wants to know who is coming in and using an EU police database known as the Schengen Information System to catch possible trouble makers. Johansson said it had triggered a few hits.

Similar comments were made by French interior minister Gerald Darmanin, who was speaking on behalf of the French EU presidency.

But Darmanin said the risk of terrorists or Russian plotters coming from Ukraine was low given that the vast majority of those entering are women, children and the elderly.

"We have to check that they are not known by the police for terrorism. There may be attempts. We haven't seen any," said Darmanin.

Opinion

How east Europe's social services cope with Ukraine refugees

More than 50 percent of the 300,000 refugees that arrived in the Czech Republic are children, and 80 percent of all adult refugees are women. More is needed for employment for women and access to nurseries for children.

Column

The Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth is back

Ukraine is finally understood — and hopefully Belarus will be soon too — as a self-standing society and state with close links to its EU neighbours, rather being relegated to Russia's backyard.

Opinion

EU migration policy will turn Greece into the jail of Europe

Europe is stepping back from its core values of human dignity, human rights and the rule of law, which have been the building blocks of the political edifice of the EU, writes Kostas Arvanitis MEP of Syriza/The Left.

Latest News

  1. Sweden worried by EU visa-free deal with Venezuela
  2. Spain denies any responsibility in Melilla migrant deaths
  3. How much can we trust Russian opinion polls on the war?
  4. Banning PFAS 'forever chemicals' may take forever in Brussels
  5. EU Parliament joins court case against Hungary's anti-LGBTI law
  6. Three French MEPs to stay on election-observation blacklist
  7. Turkey's election — the Erdoğan vs Kılıçdaroğlu showdown
  8. When geopolitics trump human rights, we are all losers

Stakeholders' Highlights

  1. Nordic Council of MinistersNordic and Baltic ways to prevent gender-based violence
  2. Nordic Council of MinistersCSW67: Economic gender equality now! Nordic ways to close the pension gap
  3. Nordic Council of MinistersCSW67: Pushing back the push-back - Nordic solutions to online gender-based violence
  4. Nordic Council of MinistersCSW67: The Nordics are ready to push for gender equality
  5. Promote UkraineInvitation to the National Demonstration in solidarity with Ukraine on 25.02.2023
  6. Azerbaijan Embassy9th Southern Gas Corridor Advisory Council Ministerial Meeting and 1st Green Energy Advisory Council Ministerial Meeting

Join EUobserver

Support quality EU news

Join us