After emergency measures, think long term. This is the main lesson of a survey by the European Agency for Fundamental Rights (FRA). Four million Ukrainian war refugees is the greatest humanitarian challenge facing Europe since the Second World War. Challenge taken up from the first weeks with the activation of the temporary protection status of the EU, a general mobilization of civil society. Conducted in the fall among 14,500 people in the ten countries* which took in the most refugees at the start of the conflict, the “Fleeing Ukraine” study shows that we must look beyond the reception of ’emergency. Three questions for Nicole Romain, spokesperson for the European Agency for Fundamental Rights.
RFI: What are the main difficulties that refugees encounter today?
Nicole Roman: They concern education, health, work and obviously, consequently, financial means. On education, we see that at the time of the survey, that is to say last year, 60% of children were still following an online education with a school in Ukraine, they were not in school in the host country, it is a big challenge if we look to the future. Secondly, health, both access to care and the state of health of refugees, are a concern. Access to care, for example, can be hampered by language problems.
Half of the displaced people we interviewed have been discouraged and depressed since their arrival. More importantly, half of children and young people have difficulty sleeping or concentrating. When you suddenly leave your house overnight, when you know nothing of what is going on there, it is easy to understand that this generates psychological problems. This must be taken into account when considering long-term integration. I would also like to point out that, on the whole, we note that the displaced people are very satisfied with their reception, but our survey nevertheless reveals incidents of violence and discrimination against people who have arrived from Ukraine in the countries that have received them.
With regard to access to employment, what is the situation?
The directive on temporary protection gives access to the labor market, that is to say that any displaced person who has arrived in one of the Member States of the European Union has the right to work, but obviously I have mentioned, language is a decisive factor. The results of the survey show that knowledge of the language of the host country played a role when people succeeded in finding a job. There is also the existence or not of means of caring for children, or elderly people with a loss of autonomy. This is not always possible and this has hindered women’s access to employment. Only a third of the people who responded to our survey have a paid job in the ten member countries we studied.
Do the refugees you interviewed plan to return to Ukraine, and if so, when?
A third of displaced people now feel integrated into the community of the host country. But the same proportion, so a third of them, would like to return to Ukraine. The others don’t know. So a third of people who have arrived in the European Union want to stay there, and yet, for the moment, what is in place is a temporary protection solution. This is a challenge for the European Union. We absolutely have to start looking at the long-term solutions. And the data from a survey like this is very useful for Member States who need to find a durable solution to ensure that people displaced by war are properly included, socio-economically, in our societies.
* Germany, Bulgaria, Spain, Estonia, Hungary, Italy, Poland, Czech Republic, Romania, Slovakia
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