Portugal welcomed 23,930 Ukrainians fleeing the Russian invasion under the temporary protection regime in March, a figure that, according to provisional data, decreased in April, according to Eurostat made public this Friday.
According to the statistics service of the European Union (EU), in March, the countries that welcomed the most Ukrainian war refugees, under the temporary protection regime, they were Poland (675,085), the Czech Republic (244,650) and Slovakia (58,750).
The numbers already available for April indicate, on the other hand, that Portugal recorded the third largest decline (-15,635 people) compared to March, after Poland (-249,465) and Slovakia (-45,310), in a total of seven Member States in which the number of temporary protections granted to Ukrainians decreased.
From March to April, according to preliminary data provided by Eurostat, Bulgaria (30,965) and Lithuania (21,800) recorded the largest monthly increases in nine member states that saw the Ukrainian refugee population grow between March and April.
On Monday, the European Union Agency for Asylum (EUAA) had advanced a total of 1.6 million applications for temporary protection of refugees from Ukraine in the EU+(27 Member States, Norway and Switzerland) in March.
On May 29, the EUAA said, almost three million people were registered for temporary protection, since the beginning of the Russian invasion of Ukraine on February 24.
Under the Temporary Protection directive (European law), those fleeing Ukraine can register for a period in the EU without having to open a formal asylum procedure.
Source: Observadora
