The EU needs to “incentivise” Ukrainians in Poland who have fled the war in their country to move on to other countries in the bloc, the European commissioner for home affairs said on Monday. Poland, the biggest of four EU countries bordering Ukraine, has taken in 2.3 million people escaping the conflict, or around 60 percent of the 3.8 million people who have left Ukraine since Russia’s invasion, according to UNHCR. It is “important to incentivise refugees to leave Poland and actually try to go also to other member states, because otherwise the situation would not be sustainable,” EU commissioner Ylva Johansson said.
She spoke as she was going into a Brussels meeting of EU interior ministers looking at way to bolster their response, and better share out responsibility, for the millions of war refugees streaming out of Ukraine. On March 4, the European Union activated a never-used directive giving temporary protection to Ukrainians, allowing them to live, work, study and have access to welfare in any of the bloc’s 27 member states.
Austria has registered 35,000 Ukrainians so far, while Lithuania has recorded the details of between 20,000 and 35,000, France and Greece have each registered 15,000, and Ireland has registered 13,500, their respective ministers said. Johansson said “we are not working on any quotas or any distribution of migrants” across EU countries.
She said that, while there was “big pressure” on the EU, especially on Poland and the Czech Republic, the rate of the flow of refugees was slowing.
“It’s around 50,000 per day. At the peak, it was more than 200,000,” she said. The refugee wave is the biggest Europe has faced since the end of World War II, she and other officials said. The European Commission has proposed making 17 billion euros ($19 billion) available for the most-impacted EU countries, with some of the money coming from unused funds left over from the EU’s last multi-year budget.
Germany and Poland have written to the Commission to urge funding to give 1,000 euros to each Ukrainian signed up to the temporary protection scheme. France’s interior minister, Gerald Darmanin, also highlighted concerns that the refugee inflow could bring with it risks in terms of human trafficking and arms smuggling.
