When people fleeing the Russian war of aggression against Ukraine arrived in EU countries, local authorities had to provide temporary protection at short notice. They made and sustained remarkable efforts to adequately receive displaced people in cooperation with civil society and other local bodies.
Many local authorities were already overburdened, and resources were scarce. Planning proved to be a major challenge for local authorities in implementing temporary protection due to uncertainty over the number of displaced people and the anticipated duration of their stay. Fluctuating data, or lack thereof, as well as length of stay and type of protection status added further complexity. Additional challenges were insufficient consultation between local authorities and national governments, limited qualified staff, limited financial resources, housing infrastructure and local capacity to provide for those with special needs.
These challenges made it difficult for local authorities to implement support measures to meet demands in the four areas regulated by the Temporary Protection Directive – housing, education, employment and healthcare.
Local accommodation solutions relied on private providers and newly sourced public facilities to provide a fast response, but it was not sustainable in the long term. People had to move frequently. That increased local administrative workload and negatively affected beneficiaries, particularly children attending school.
Local authorities faced several challenges with reimbursing private accommodation providers. Reasons for discontinuing privately provided accommodation included delays, complicated administrative procedures, insufficient allowances, fraud and uncertainty about the continuation of reimbursement. Prior vetting of privately provided accommodation was a significant burden on local authorities. They did not do it systematically in advance everywhere.
Increasing public accommodation capacity was difficult because planning and funding were uncertain. As a result, conditions were poor and posed risks to children and vulnerable people. Information on housing options was sometimes confusing or not available in Ukrainian. Funding was not always correctly assigned, and efforts to acquire funding put additional strain on local authorities.
Many arrivals, such as women with small children and elderly people had special needs. Local housing solutions could not always take them into account. The temporary nature of displaced people’ protection status and the uncertainty of their stay were obstacles to getting housing on private markets.
Children with temporary protection can access education under the same conditions as country nationals in all Member States, except in Slovakia, where they do not have to attend school. A key challenge was that authorities lacked an overview of the number of school-aged displaced children in their areas. Another was that in some places schools did not have enough capacity, or were not well enough prepared, to teach displaced children and provide the educational support they need.
National and local authorities did not always coordinate with each other when distributing displaced children to enrol. That caused uncertainty for schools. Civil society organisations, volunteers and school administrations helped displaced children to integrate in school procedures.
All Member States granted access to employment, self-employment and vocational training. In the locations covered, only a small proportion of temporary protection beneficiaries found a job early on, but employment increased between November 2022 and March 2023.
Temporary protection beneficiaries mainly work in unskilled and semi-skilled occupations across the EU, despite being overqualified for these jobs. Local authorities and public employment agencies tried to make it easier to employ temporary protection holders but faced several challenges. Few beneficiaries registered with public employment services in Austria and Belgium. Procedures for recognising professional qualifications are burdensome and lengthy. Limited availability of childcare is a key barrier, as most temporary protection beneficiaries are women, many of them with children.
Local healthcare providers already had bottlenecks in their systems. They faced additional challenges specific to temporary protection beneficiaries. Those included additional administrative burdens, unclear, insufficient or delayed health insurance coverage, language barriers and uncertainty on identifying and providing for people with special needs.
Based on the information collected, the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights (FRA) identifies 12 priority actions for EU Member States, local authorities and the European Commission in line with the requirements of Articles 13 and 14 of the Temporary Protection Directive. These actions build on FRA’s findings in previous reports on displaced people’s experience in the EU, and the series of bulletins.
