Meeting at the ‘Justice and Home Affairs’ Council in Luxembourg, the EU’s interior ministers sketched out a tougher migration policy in response to the fallout from the war in Ukraine.
At the heart of the debate was the future of the Temporary Protection Directive, given that there are currently 4.33 million Ukrainian beneficiaries of this status in the EU. According to a note from the Cyprus Presidency of the EU Council dated Tuesday 2 June, which Agence Europe was able to consult, the mechanism should be extended until March 2028, but with a restriction on its scope.
On Thursday, a broad consensus emerged in favour of excluding new arrivals of conscription age (23-60) who do not have the right to leave their country legally. Member States are faced with a changing flow profile: “Recently, more than half the arrivals have been men in their productive years, subject to military duty”, warned the Czech Interior Minister, Lubomír Metnar, whose country has the highest ratio of Ukrainian refugees in the EU (34.8 per 1,000 inhabitants).
Germany, which hosts the largest proportion of the scheme’s beneficiaries (28.7%), also showed its support, as did Poland (22.3% of refugees), although the latter firmly rejected any geographical limitation based on Ukrainian regions deemed “safe” - another possibility currently on the negotiating table.
At the same time, ten Member States are calling for an end to tourist visas for Russians. In a joint letter sent on 2 June to Kaja Kallas, the High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs, and Magnus Brunner, the European Commissioner for Migration and Home Affairs, the Nordic and Baltic countries, the Czech Republic, the Netherlands and Poland denounced a security loophole in the run-up to summer. They point out that 477,878 ‘tourist’ Schengen visas were still issued to Russian citizens in 2025, calling the situation intolerable in view of the atrocities still being committed in Ukraine.
Johan Forssell, the Swedish Minister for Migration, whose country led the initiative, explained his point of view to the press on Thursday: “It makes no sense at all that almost 500,000 Russians come to Europe every summer to live a life of luxury, drinking red wine on terraces, while Ukrainians are dying”, he said. The signatories therefore urge the European Commission to introduce binding measures in the Visa Code as a matter of urgency. (Original version in French by Justine Manaud)