EU interior ministers will discuss on Monday (2:30 pm) how to deal with the huge influx of refugees from Ukraine. The main focus should be on the distribution of the nearly four million refugees to EU countries. German Interior Minister Nancy Faeser recently said the goal should be a fixed quota for distribution in Europe. Ukrainian Interior Minister Denis Monastyrski is said to be temporarily connected by video.
Austria is represented at the meeting by the Minister of the Interior Gerhard Karner (ÖVP). The meeting is the second crisis meeting of interior ministers since Russia’s war with Ukraine began on February 24. In early March, EU states decided to offer protection to all Ukrainians quickly and without bureaucracy. However, the large number of refugees poses challenges for the international community. In a recent letter to the EU Commission, Faeser and his Polish counterpart asked for more help in distributing refugees to other EU countries, as well as financial support.
According to the UN refugee agency, more than 3.8 million of the more than 44 million Ukrainians have left the country since the start of the war. More than two million refugees have arrived in Poland alone, 212,000 people seeking protection have been counted in Austria, but four-fifths of them are still traveling to other countries. As of Saturday, 32,500 “displaced people”, as they are officially called based on the diction of the EU directive, had been registered in Austria.
On Monday it will be about how EU countries that host refugees can be supported financially and materially. The travel of refugees after arriving from one EU country to another must also be coordinated. In addition, support for the small country of Moldova, where many people have already arrived, as well as controls at the EU’s external borders and security issues.