On 2 March 2022, the European Commission proposed to activate the TPD to offer quick and effective protection to those fleeing the war. The directive was adopted in 2001 to address situations of mass arrivals of displaced people and had never been activated. On 4 March 2022, in an unprecedented move, the Council adopted implementing decision 2022/832. It established the existence of a mass influx of displaced people from Ukraine and, as a result, introduced temporary protection for displaced people from Ukraine.

The temporary protection regime was initially adopted for a period of one year, until 4 March 2023. It was subsequently prolonged twice for one year each time, until 4 March 2025. That is the maximum duration possible under EU law.

The Council implementing decision distinguishes between three specific groups of people to whom temporary protection applies:

• those to whom Member States must grant temporary protection, including Ukrainian nationals and international protection beneficiaries in Ukraine before 24 February 2022 and family members of both (Article 2(1));
• people on whom Member States should confer temporary protection or other forms of adequate protection under national law, including third-country nationals with valid residence permits in Ukraine before 24 of February (Article 2 (2));
• people to whom Member States may decide to grant temporary protection, including all other stateless persons or third-country nationals unable to return to their country or origin (Article 2 (3)).

Even if displaced people do not fall under the scope of protection, they can pass through the EU to return to their countries of origin.

The directive entitles beneficiaries to several rights and benefits. They include the four basic rights covered in this report: access to housing and social welfare, employment, education and healthcare. The report focuses on the rights of temporary protection beneficiaries and the role of local authorities as duty bearers under the directive.

National level legislation and policy have determined the exact scope of beneficiaries’ entitlements. They leave relatively limited room for manoeuvre for local authorities to adopt specific measures.

Local authorities have had to deliver on these rights in practice and ensure the accessibility and quality of support provided to access these rights. This has meant, for example, ensuring that sufficient adequate facilities are available, that beneficiaries and public service staff know the applicable rights, that administrative procedures do not complicate access to rights, that social infrastructure is sufficient and that financial resources are available promptly. Depending on the administrative organisation of the Member State, local and regional authorities may also share powers and be responsible for certain tasks in some policy areas, for example providing and managing certain types of state-run accommodation facilities or funding educational institutions and healthcare facilities, whereas local-level leeway concerning employment is typically limited.

The Charter binds Member States, including local authorities, when they implement the TPD through their national legislation (Article 51 (1)). They must therefore apply the directive in light of the Charter, including for example human dignity (Article 1), as a component of an adequate standard of living, the right to social and housing assistance (Article 34), the right to education (Article 14), the right to engage in work (Article 15), the right to access to healthcare (Article 35) and the right to life (Article 2).

Most of the Charter rights apply to all people, including non-EU nationals. Some are restricted to EU citizens or lawful residents only, for example access to the labour market in any EU Member State or the right to vote in EU elections. Secondary EU law further defines the rights of specific third-country nationals other than temporary protection beneficiaries in the four areas that this report covers. Those third-country nationals include, for example, asylum applicants, long-term residents, blue card holders and people in return procedures [6] See, for example, Directive 2013/33/EU, 26 June 2013; Council Directive 2003/109/EC of 25 November 2003; Council Directive 2009/50/EC, 25 May 2009; Directive 2008/115/EC, 16 December 2008.
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The European Commission published operational guidelines to help Member States apply the temporary protection regime. The European Commission also issued a 10-point plan for stronger European coordination on welcoming people fleeing from Ukraine. The plan established an EU platform to register temporary protection beneficiaries and other people with protection under national law, so Member States could exchange information, avoid multiple registrations and limit possible abuse of the system. There is also a Solidarity Platform, which coordinates the operational response to displacement from Ukraine and discusses the implementation of the 10-point plan.

The TPD confers a set of rights on beneficiaries of temporary protection. Once a person qualifies for temporary protection, Member States must provide them with a residence permit for the duration of the protection. Member States must also provide beneficiaries with a document certifying temporary protection status.

To help provide information for displaced people, the European Commission has created a multilingual platform with information for people fleeing the war in Ukraine. On the four thematic areas in this report, the Commission has issued recommendations and guidance documents. They build on the existing action plan on integration and inclusion 2021–2027.

Concerning housing, the TPD stipulates in Article 13 (1) that Member States must ensure that temporary protection beneficiaries have access to suitable housing or can receive the required means to obtain accommodation. The EU has adopted the ‘Safe Homes’ initiative as part of the 10-point plan.

The Commission published key guidelines for Member States on how to ensure that private housing initiatives for displaced people from Ukraine are suitable. The guidance contains advice on measures to support hosts and to match appropriate hosts with people in need of accommodation. It provides key principles on how to guarantee that private housing is safe and secure.

Under the TPD, temporary protection beneficiaries under 18 years of age must have access to education on the same conditions as nationals of the host Member State (Article 14). If they are older, it is at the Member State’s discretion.

The European Commission also published guidance on supporting the inclusion of displaced children from Ukraine in education. It emphasises that access to education for unaccompanied minors should be facilitated as soon as possible, even when the appointment of a guardian/representative is ongoing and the type of care that the child is entitled to is still being determined. To implement the TPD measures effectively, EU Member States must coordinate and facilitate processes related to temporary protection within their territories.

Member States must allow temporary protection beneficiaries to engage in employment or self-employment, subject to the rules applicable to each profession, and in other activities, including educational opportunities for adults, vocational training and practical workplace experience (Article 12). The European Commission issued guidance for access to the labour market for Member States to do this.

The EU has also taken a set of initiatives to facilitate labour market integration. European Employment Services has developed an EU Talent Pool Pilot. It brings together job vacancies and the CVs of temporary protection beneficiaries in a single portal. In mid-2023, the system was operational in seven Member States (Croatia, Czechia, Lithuania, Poland, Slovakia, Spain, Sweden).

The EU skills profile tool for third country nationals has become available in Ukrainian. Non-EU nationals can fill it in and use it in interviews, for example with employment services.

To aid integration in the labour market and in education, the European Commission issued a recommendation on the recognition of qualifications for people fleeing Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and a comparison report of the European qualifications framework and the Ukrainian national qualifications framework.

The recommendation aims to ensure that temporary protection beneficiaries can access jobs that correspond to their qualification level. It encourages Member States to minimise the formalities for recognising professional qualifications. For example, they could establish fast-track procedures for temporary protection beneficiaries, accept other types of proof than original documents or make the procedure free of charge.

The recommendation also contains guidance concerning regulated professions. Regarding academic recognition, the European Commission proposes the automatic recognition of Ukrainian higher education qualifications that meet certain requirements. It encourages Member States to accept a recognition decision made in another Member State. There is also guidance on how to deal with incomplete evidence.

Under the TPD, people it covers are also entitled to social welfare if they do not have sufficient resources. They also have a right to medical care. It must include at least emergency care and essential care for illness (Article 13 (2)). Furthermore, Member States must provide assistance to temporary protection beneficiaries with special needs, including unaccompanied children, and people who have undergone torture, rape or other serious forms of psychological, physical or sexual violence (Article 13 (4)).

In April 2022, 90 % of displaced people were women and children. That heightens risks of exploitation and of trafficking in human beings. The EU anti-trafficking framework provides for measures to address trafficking in human beings. The anti-trafficking directive and the EU strategy on combatting trafficking in human beings (2021–2025) contain preventive measures as well as measures to protect victims.

To address the specific risks that people fleeing the war in Ukraine face, the EU has adopted a common anti-trafficking plan under the lead of the EU Anti-trafficking Coordinator, as part of the 10-point plan. It includes actions for EU agencies, including FRA, and the European Commission to raise awareness of the risks of trafficking in human beings, to set up helplines, to reinforce prevention of trafficking, to enhance the law enforcement and judicial response to trafficking and to strengthen the early identification, support and protection of victims.

Several EU funds have been opened to help implement the TPD in the Member States. The European Commission introduced the flexible use of funding available from the 2014–2020 cohesion policy funds and set up a Ukraine reconstruction platform to ensure coordinated support for Ukraine’s reconstruction. The regulation on cohesion’s action for refugees in Europe allows Member States and regions to use or reallocate resources from either the European Fund for Regional Development or the European Social Fund for any type of measures to support people fleeing Ukraine. The asylum, migration and integration fund (2021–2027) and the extension of Home Affairs funds for 2014–2020 also offered Member States the flexibility to finance measures in support of hosting those displaced by the war. Additional resources come from the recovery assistance for cohesion and the territories of Europe funds under the new instrument NextGenerationEU, amounting to € 50.6 billion, in addition to cohesion allocations for 2021–2027.

This report builds on desk research and interviews with local authorities between November 2022 and March 2023, and online consultations with local support organisations in May and June 2023 (see Annexes 1–3). Questions focused on local measures to ensure access to rights granted under temporary protection, and on challenges arising in practice. They covered four thematic areas: housing, education, employment and healthcare.

The report covers 26 diverse locations. They were selected to show how challenges in supporting high numbers of displaced people were addressed in different settings. The main selection criteria were the number of temporary protection registrations and diversity in geography, administrative organisation and prior experience.

All these locations had received many displaced people since the beginning of the war and made tremendous efforts to ensure their timely access to rights provided under the TPD. Figure 1 shows the total number of temporary protection registrations per location, reflecting figures from January 2023 in most cases, and then the number of inhabitants.

Figure 1 – Map of selected locations: total numbers of displaced people registered for temporary protection and inhabitants

Source: FRA, June 2023

Alternative text: A map showing locations ranging from County Kerry in the west to Constanța in the east, and from Tallinn in the north to Naples in the south. The largest number of displaced people registered for temporary protection is 103,238 in Prague, which has 1,309,000 inhabitants. The smallest number of displaced people registered for temporary protection is 543 in Malmö, which has 344,166 inhabitants. The largest population is 12,210,000 in Île-de-France, which has 18,000 displaced people registered for temporary protection. The smallest population is 33,307 in Saaremaa, which has 636 displaced people registered for temporary protection. Data for registered displaced people is as of January or February 2023 except for Stuttgart and Bruges which is from November or December 2022. Data for Styria is from July 2022.

In terms of geographical diversity, the list includes national capital cities, provincial capitals (for example Katowice or Naples), rural locations such as the district of Uckermark in Germany, and regions such as the Brussels Region in Belgium or County Kerry in Ireland. Locations include large cities, such as Gothenburg and Malmö, the second and third largest cities in Sweden, and smaller locations, such as the city of Trutnov in Czechia with 29,430 inhabitants or the island of Saaremaa in Estonia. Others are very near Ukraine, such as the city of Lublin in Poland.

Locations differ in terms of wealth. For example, Bruges is one of the wealthiest cities in Belgium, whereas in the neighbouring Brussels Region the average income per inhabitant is 21.5 % lower than the Belgian average. Some cities, such as Nice in the Alpes-Maritime department, attracted displaced people who were more affluent and already had ties to this area of France.

Some locations had previous experience in dealing with large-scale arrivals of refugees and local integration policies. Malmö, for example, played a key part in receiving Syrian refugees in 2015. Others had been home to large diaspora communities of Ukrainian citizens before the war, for instance Stuttgart, Berlin or Warsaw, in contrast to Bucharest or Constanța.

Some of the locations – for example Vienna and Graz (the regional capital of Styria) – were able to draw on their experience as human rights cities or members of the Eurocities network: Tallinn, Malmö, Nice, Katowice, Gothenburg, Brussels, Berlin, Warsaw, Vienna, Constanța. Through the Committee of the Regions, some cities and regions also participate in the European alliance of cities and regions for the reconstruction of Ukraine and various partner forums as well as city-to-city partnerships, which also include Ukrainian cities. All this experience has been useful in responding to the arrivals and may in future help to reintegrate temporary protection beneficiaries returning to Ukraine.