Number of Ukrainian refugees with temporary protection in EU up by 41,300 in Aug - Eurostat

MOSCOW. Oct 11 (Interfax) - A total of 4,155,600 non-EU citizens who left Ukraine after February 24, 2022 had temporary protection status in EU countries as of August 31, 2023, Ukrainian media said, citing the European Union's Statistics Agency (Eurostat).

"Compared with the end of July 2023, the number of beneficiaries of temporary protection from Ukraine in the EU increased by 41 275 (+1.0%). The largest absolute increases were observed in Germany (+21 830; +1.9%), Czechia (+7 545; +2.1%) and the Netherlands (+2 635; +1.7%)," Eurostat said.

The number of people from Ukraine under EU temporary protection rose by 1.1%, or by 45,900-45,800 people, in July and June, in May it grew by 1.4%, or by 57,300 people, and in April by 1.3%, or by 51,000 people. Over these five months, the largest increases were recorded in Germany - by around 108,000 people in total - and by 39,800 people in the Czech Republic.

Meanwhile, Poland saw the biggest decrease in the number of people under temporary protection: by 1.1%, or 10,530 people, in August, and by 39,200 people over the five months, Eurostat said.

Another two countries where the number of people under temporary protection declined in August was Italy (by 0.3%, 550 people) and France (by 0.6%, 420 people).

The main EU countries hosting beneficiaries of temporary protection from Ukraine as of late August were Germany (1 175 695 people; 28.3% of the total), Poland (960,550; 23%) and the Czech Republic (365,085; 9%), Eurostat said. These three countries accounted for 60.2% of the overall number.

Compared with the population of each EU member, the highest numbers of total temporary protection beneficiaries per thousand people at the end of August 2023 were observed in the Czech Republic (33.7), Estonia (26.2), Poland (26.1), Bulgaria (25.6) and Lithuania (25.3), whereas the corresponding figure at the EU level was equal to 9.3 per thousand people.

On 31 August 2023, Ukrainian citizens represented over 98% of the beneficiaries of temporary protection. Adult women made up almost half (46.5%) of temporary protection beneficiaries in the EU. Children accounted for slightly more than one-third (33.9%), while adult men comprised less than a fifth (19.5%) of the total.

In August, Spain returned to fourth place by the number of Ukrainian refugees with temporary protection status (184,830), while Bulgaria was again in fifth place (164,880).

More than 100,000 Ukrainian citizens who had EU temporary protection were recorded in Italy (159,890), Romania (137,850), the Netherlands (131,940), and Slovakia (107,630) as of late July.

Their numbers ranging from 50,000 to 100,000, not counting children, were registered in Ireland (92,560), Austria (78,350), Lithuania (72,230), Belgium (70,070), France (66,930), Switzerland (65,390), Finland (60,100), Portugal (56,710), and Norway (52,610).

They are followed by Latvia (42,840), Sweden (41,180), Denmark (36,880), Estonia (35,780), Hungary (32,750), Greece (25,740), Croatia (22,330), Cyprus (17,920), Luxembourg (4,190), Iceland (3,330), Malta (1,850), and Liechtenstein (520).

Data presented in this article refer to the attribution of temporary protection status based on the Council Implementing Decision 2022/382 of 4 March 2022, establishing the existence of a mass influx of displaced persons from Ukraine and having the effect of introducing temporary protection.

Data from the UN Refugee Agency estimated the number of Ukrainian refugees in Europe at 5.835 million and at 6.205 million worldwide on October 3, which is 1,000 more than in the previous week.

UN data released in late May put the number of internally displaced persons in Ukraine at 5.088 million.