It’s a “paradigm shift” said the Commissioner for Home Affairs, Ylva Johansson, on Thursday 3 March: the Twenty-Seven have decided to apply for the first time a directive from 2001, it grants “temporary protection” refugees fleeing the war in Ukraine. They will be able to stay for at least one year in the European Union (EU), work there, access social assistance and housing, the education system and medical care.
The measure will benefit Ukrainians, those who already had refugee status and foreigners who have been residing in Ukraine for a long time. Those who did not have a residence permit in this country will be helped, before being repatriated to their country of origin, promises Mme Johansson. A long negotiation resulted in a compromise: each country can either apply the European decision or specific national legislation. Austria, Poland and Hungary did not want to subscribe to a text applicable in the future to other refugees.
An immense outpouring of generosity is evident, in any case, almost everywhere and contrasts sharply with the reluctance that was expressed, especially in central and eastern Europe, at the time of the wars in Syria and Afghanistan.
In addition, the testimonies on the brutalities of which nationals of third countries have been victims, both in Ukraine and in Poland, are multiplying and have provoked a worried reaction from Antonio Vitorino, director of the International Organization for Migration (IOM ), a UN agency. The former European commissioner said to himself on Thursday, ” alarm “ by “verified reports on discrimination, violence and xenophobia” suffered by people trying to flee the conflict.
In Brussels, “we know nothing” stresses a source at the Commission. Testimonies and images have confirmed that people of African, Asian or Caribbean origin have been forcibly detained in Ukrainian train stations or brutalized by the police. Others were separated from Ukrainian citizens by Polish military and border guards. Polish radical nationalist activists brutalized several Indian students on Tuesday 1er March, in the streets of Przemysl, in the south-east of the country.
” Segregation “
“The government is doing much more than we hoped, underlines the president of the Polish Migration Forum (PFM), Agnieszka Kosowicz. Aid from civil society has taken on absolutely immense proportions, but what worries us is the segregation of arrivals from other continents, who are treated differently by the authorities and by the population. »
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