The deputy head of the Ministry of the Interior and Administration, Błażej Poboży, said that Poland would like to obtain EUR 2 billion 200 million from the European Union to help refugees from Ukraine. He emphasized that it is important that this money is not burdened with complicated procedures of obtaining and settling it – unlike traditional EU funds.

“We are calculating the costs at around a thousand euros per person for the first six months. On the day when those needs were reported to the European Commission, this amounted to EUR 2 billion 200 million; the amount we expect to raise. It is important that these funds are so-called easy money when it comes to spending them,” said the deputy interior minister.

Poboży stressed that these funds should not be burdened with settlement methods such as traditional EU funds. He added that the current EU recommendations indicate to use of other EU funds such as Cohesion or the Asylum, Migration and Integration Fund.

“It applies to funds that have not yet been spent. If we reached for such funds subordinate to the Ministry of the Interior, it would make about EUR 16 million, while the needs are much larger”, assessed the deputy minister.

According to data from the United Nations, more than 4 million Ukrainian citizens left their homeland to escape the war. This is more than twice as many people as immigrated to Europe during the great wave of migration in 2015. The largest number of the people who decided to leave Ukraine came to Poland.

According to the data of the Border Guard, over 2,344 million people have crossed the Polish border in Ukraine since the beginning of the war. Not everyone stayed in Poland. In the opinion of Prof. Maciej Duszczyk from the Center for Migration Research of the University of Warsaw, only 1.2 – 1.3 million Ukrainians will remain in Poland. The others most often decide to move further to the West (800-900 thousand), and the number of people returning to Ukraine is also growing.

Arkadiusz Słomczyński