The Council of the European Union has agreed to extend for another year the validity of the temporary protection program for Ukrainian citizens who entered the territory of the EU countries due to a full-scale invasion of russia.
The press service of the EU Council announced this on Thursday, September 28.
“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 said.
Temporary protection is a system providing immediate and collective (i.e. without the need for the examination of individual applications) protection to displaced persons (in this case, citizens of Ukraine) 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 harmonised 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.
As Ukrainian News Agency earlier reported, on September 20, the European Commission proposed to extend the validity of the temporary protection program, which was introduced on March 4, 2022 for refugees from Ukraine.
We also reported that as of August 2023, almost 2.5 million Ukrainians left Ukraine because of a full-scale war and did not return.
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