Poland, Czechia host most Ukrainians in CEE

Poland and Czechia are the leading countries in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) for offering temporary protection status to Ukrainian refugees, according to new figures released this week by Eurostat.

According to the EU’s official statistics agency, at the end of June, Poland was giving 977,740 people temporary protection from the war in Ukraine, or 24% of the nearly 4.07mn non-EU citizens who have since fled the war-torn country, trailing only Germany.

Czechia is in third place, having given temporary protection status to 349,140, or 9% of those who left the country due to the Russian invasion on 24 February 2022. In first place is Germany, which has taken in 1,133,420 – or 28% of the total number of – displaced people.

Compared to the end of May 2023, Eurostat added, the number of beneficiaries of temporary protection from Ukraine rose in the EU by 45,800 – or 1.1%. The largest increases were in Germany (21,830, or 2%), Czechia (9,050, or 2.7%) and Ireland (3,100, or 3.7%). Only two countries saw a fall: Poland (13,635, 1.4%) and Italy (1,005, 0.6%). 

Relative to population size, the five highest number of refugees were all in CEE: Czechia (32.2 per 1,000 people), Poland (26.6), Estonia (25.8), Bulgaria (24.9) and Lithuania (24.7). The EU average was 9.1 per 1,000 people.

Hungary has been Ukraine’s least helpful neighbour, according to Eurostat, granting temporary protection to 32,000 people, or slightly over 3.3 per 1,000 people. This puts Hungary last in CEE and fifth in the EU as a whole, behind only France (just under 1), Greece (2.4), Italy (2.7) and Malta (nearly 3.3).

On 30 June 2023, Ukrainian citizens comprised over 98% of the beneficiaries of temporary protection, with adult women making up 46.6% of the total, children 34.4%, and adult males 19.%.

The protection is based on the Council Implementing Decision 2022/382 of 4 March 2022, which established the existence of a mass influx of displaced persons from Ukraine due to Russia’s military invasion, and introduced temporary protection statuses, Eurostat explained.