At the end of the first week of the Russian invasion, i.e. on March 3, 2022, more than 1 million refugees (2.3% of the Ukrainian population) left Ukraine for neighboring European countries, in particular the Poland, but also other countries such as Hungary, Moldova or Slovakia.
As the flow of refugees is about to become the largest migration crisis in Europe since the Second World War, the reaction of European countries is very different from that provoked by the Syrian refugee crisis in 2015 -1 million refugees in a few months- or the fears of a massive influx of Afghans after the evacuation of their country by Western forces in August 2021 and the seizure of power by the Taliban.
And yet, the flow of refugees is likely to be enormous. The United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR) estimates the potential number of refugees over the next few months at between 4 and 7 million people, far exceeding the total arrivals of migrants and refugees in Europe over the past seven years. While the 2015 migration crisis threatened to disintegrate the European Union, whose member states have still not agreed on a system for the redistribution of irregular immigrants and refugees, the Ukrainian migration crisis seems to be unfolding without triggering too many concerns in European countries, in addition to the management of humanitarian assistance, which is always difficult.
In any case, a far cry from the hysteria provoked just a few months ago by a few thousand Iraqi and Afghan refugees pushed by Belarus to try to enter countries of the European Union (EU) via the borders of the Poland and Lithuania between September and November 2021, and which were turned back and reported as a “hybrid threat”, i.e. an act of war, to the point of preventing the construction of a fence at of the border between Poland and Belarus.
This time, the fate of the Ukrainian people seems to be concerned with much more than the impact of the flow of refugees on European societies. On the contrary, the EU activated on March 3, and for the first time, provisions of the Temporary Protection Directive of 2001 – never applied before – which holds an unlimited reception of refugees in the event of a crisis, with the automatic granting status of refugee without having to submit an asylum application and, therefore, without going through the long administrative process of recognition, with the right to asylum access to essential services – accommodation, food aid, health assistance, education – and a work permit for an initial period of three years.
Paradoxically, it is one of the countries most relentless in its opposition to any type of openness towards refugees from third countries, Poland, which has become the champion of this reception of Ukrainians displaced by the war, announcing that it is ready to welcome “as many Ukrainians as will arrive at our borders”. And the President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen,
Refugees like no other
Pending the impact of this new flow in the longer term, and the European response which, among other things, will depend on the duration of the war and the magnitude of the flow of refugees, here are some reasons explaining this very different:
– European War: the war in Ukraine is European, and solidarity with Ukrainian refugees is understood as a dimension of the unanimous position against Russia. The wars in Syria, Afghanistan, Libya or Ethiopia do not cause the same turmoil in European public opinion as a war taking place on European soil allows;
– Ukrainian Diaspora: several competent European countries already have a significant Ukrainian diaspora. These are migrant workers who have arrived since the 1990s, in a continuous flow: with perhaps a million in Poland (including 330,000 with a residence permit) and more than 200,000 in Germany, Italy or the Czech Republic. These networks of relatives and friends of the Ukrainian diaspora quickly mobilized to welcome the refugees. In fact, Ukrainian citizens have already benefited from visa-free entry into EU territory since 2017, where they can stay for 90 days simply by presenting their passport;
– Cultural and ethnic affinities: Ukrainians are Orthodox Christians, and ethnically slaves. As such, they integrate without great difficulty in countries like Poland;
– Shared borders: the human tide of Ukrainians is much harder to stop than the flow of Syrian refugees; the countries of first reception are European. While the EU has managed to retain in Turkey, that is to say far from its territory, 3.6 million Syrian refugees (three times greater than those it has received), Ukraine shares almost 1,400 kilometers of direct land borders with four EU Member States: Poland, Slovakia, Romania and Hungary. Excluding Russia and Belarus, as well as Moldova, which also shares a 1,200 km border with Ukraine, Ukrainian refugees have no other alternatives than these four EU countries.
Ultimately, while Europe is facing a real migratory crisis without precedent in terms of the magnitude of the potential flows, it seems to be preparing in all serenity to ensure the reception of new refugees under better humanitarian conditions, as well as their possible integration into European societies and labor markets.
In turn, this shows that while we were talking about a migration crisis in 2015, and when migrants mainly supplied from Syria or Afghanistan, but also from Africa, it was above all a crisis of reception and rejection of non-European migrants from Muslim or African countries.
Differential treatment
However, this new spirit does not benefit all refugees from the war in Ukraine. On the ground, citizens of third countries, including the tens of thousands of African students trapped by the war, are differentiated, received separately from Ukrainian nationals and will only benefit from a temporary visa until they return to their native country. Cases of refusal to board trains and buses in Ukraine and deportation at borders have also been reported.
This discrimination caused the African Union (AU) to recall, in a press release published on February 28, that “everyone has the right to cross borders during a conflict should enjoy the same rights regardless of their nationality or racial identity. ”, and which she finds “shocking and racist”, as well as unacceptable. And this, only two weeks after the 6th European Union-African Union Summit and despite the fact that the European Commissioner for Home Affairs announced, after a first special meeting of Ministers of the Interior held in Brussels on 27 February, that the reception of refugees from Ukraine also extends to citizens of third countries fleeing that country.
*Senior Fellow au Policy Center for the New South,