EU Council extends temporary protection for Ukrainian refugees: New date
EU Council extends temporary protection for Ukrainian refugees (Getty Images)
The European Council has agreed to extend temporary protection for Ukrainian refugees from March 4 2024 to March 4 2025, according to the EU Council website.
"In order to provide certainty for more than 4 million Ukrainian refugees currently living in the EU, the Council agreed to extend the temporary protection for people fleeing from Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine from 4 March 2024 to 4 March 2025," the statement reads.
What is temporary protection?
This mechanism was activated on 4 March 2022 – only a few days after Russian armed forces launched a large-scale invasion of Ukraine – and it was automatically extended by one year.
The system provides immediate and collective (i.e. without the need for the examination of individual applications) protection to displaced persons who are not in a position to return to their country of origin.
The objective is to alleviate pressure on national asylum systems and to allow displaced persons to enjoy harmonized rights across the EU. These rights include:
- residence
- access to the labor market and housing
- medical assistance
- social welfare assistance
- access to education for children.
"Following today’s political agreement, the Council will have to formally adopt the decision to extend the temporary protection. This will happen once the legal scrubbing and translation in all EU languages has taken place," the statement says.
