The Ukrainian war refugees are to be gradually distributed across Europe – but voluntarily, not by means of a legally binding allocation.
Almost four million Ukrainians have already fled their country before the Russian attack, and the German government and the French EU Council Presidency expect up to ten million – but these war refugees will be distributed across the EU using a legally binding quota system not give in the foreseeable future. “We are not working on a quota or on any kind of mandatory distribution of refugees,” said Ylva Johansson, the EU interior commissioner, on Monday before the start of a crisis meeting of the 27 national interior ministers and their counterparts from the Schengen countries Norway and Switzerland. “The fixed quotas are over in my opinion, and in this case it would not help,” agreed Czech Interior Minister Vít Rakušan. “We don’t believe in quotas,” said his Austrian counterpart, Gerald Karner (ÖVP). “I expect that we will distribute more actively in the EU, but it’s not about fixed quotas,” said the German Interior Minister, Nancy Faeser.
Why 2022 is different from 2015
Just six or seven years ago, in view of the wave of Syrian refugees, the majority of people in Brussels and among the interior ministers saw the situation differently. The Commission proposed legislation that would oblige each Member State to accept a certain number of asylum seekers according to a complicated formula. Above all, Poland and Hungary and, in their wake, Slovakia and the Czech Republic, opposed this and even accepted infringement proceedings from the Commission for non-compliance with this quota system. Ultimately, everyone involved emerged from this dispute damaged: the Commission under its then President Jean-Claude Juncker became the target of party political attacks in the above-mentioned Eastern European countries, the long-overdue reform of the EU’s asylum and migration system was made permanently impossible due to the mutual loss of trust, and the refugees were not helped either.