According to the Minister Delegate for Citizenship Marlène Schiappa, 36,000 Ukrainians fleeing the war have been registered in France.
Five weeks after the invasion of Ukraine by Russia, 36,000 displaced people fleeing the war have been registered in France, announced Friday Marlène Schiappa, Minister Delegate for Citizenship. “Today we have welcomed around 36,000 people from Ukraine to France. These people are overwhelmingly of Ukrainian nationality, but there are also people who are of other nationalities”, indicated the Minister in charge of reception and integration of refugees, during a hearing in Paris by several associations helping exiles, during which she represented the candidate Emmanuel Macron.
Since the first arrivals of displaced people fleeing the conflict – which started on February 24 – the French government has based its census on the number of people checked by border police on their arrival in the territory. Figures which therefore do not represent the number of people actually received in France, since many Ukrainians then go to other countries, first and foremost Spain, Italy and the United Kingdom.
Good practices for other populations
Emmanuel Macron “asked to create the conditions for receiving 100,000 people in France to accommodate as many people as necessary”, recalled Marlène Schiappa, heard by the associations at the Museum of the History of Immigration. Asked about the difference in reception reserved for people fleeing conflicts in Syria or Afghanistan and those leaving Ukraine, the minister refuted the idea of a variable geometry reception.
“The fact of proposing this temporary protection (unblocked by Europe for Ukraine three decades after its adoption) for other cases, we absolutely cannot exclude it”, declared Marlène Schiappa. “Everything we are doing for Ukraine at the moment can be good practices that we can then develop for other populations,” she added.