Future status of Ukrainian refugees mired in EU red tape

Outstanding issues on the future status of some 4.7 million Ukrainian refugees throughout the EU persist as policymakers wrangle over long-term solutions.

The EU’s temporary protection directive, launched following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, has been used to as a legal basis throughout member states.

Set up in the aftermath of the Yugoslav war, the EU refugee-protection law is supposed to be used in the event of a “mass influx or imminent mass influx” of people coming into an EU state.

It is a form of temporary protection designed to offer immediate help by granting large groups of people a kind of collective asylum status.

This directive was initially slated to be scrapped in the lead up to the EU’s pact on asylum and migration — but was revived after Russia’s invasion.

But Ylva Johansson, the special envoy for Ukrainians in the EU, says that the directive is no longer fit for purpose as it puts Ukrainians in a state of perpetual limbo.

“The majority of the temporary protection beneficiaries have been here for almost four years, because the majority came already in the beginning of the full-scale invasion,” she said on Tuesday (28 October) at an event hosted by the Brussels-based think thank, the European Policy Centre.