Eurostat: 4.3 million who fled Russia’s war on Ukraine had temporary protection in EU in January 2025
On January 31 2025, almost 4.3 million non-EU citizens who fled Ukraine as a consequence of the Russian war of aggression against Ukraine had temporary protection status in the EU, the bloc’s statistics agency Eurostat said on March 10.
The EU countries hosting the highest number of beneficiaries of temporary protection from Ukraine were Germany (1 170 250 people; 27.3 per cent of the EU total), Poland (993 015; 23.2 per cent) and Czechia (394 985; 9.2 per cent).
Compared with the end of December 2024, the total number of people under temporary protection in the EU at the end of January increased by 25 530 (+0.6 per cent).
The largest absolute increases in the number of beneficiaries were in Germany (+8 800; +0.8 per cent), Czechia (+6 360; +1.6 per cent) and Spain (+3 050; +1.3 per cent).
The number of people under temporary protection decreased only in Denmark (-2 245; -6.1 per cent), France (-660; -1.1 per cent), Austria (-420; -0.5 per cent) and Lithuania (-155; -0.3 per cent).
Compared with the population of each EU country, the highest ratio of temporary protection beneficiaries per 1000 people were in Czechia (36.2), Poland (27.1) and Estonia (26.0) whereas the corresponding figure at the EU level was 9.5 per 1000 people.
On January 31 2025, Ukrainian citizens represented over 98.4 per cent of the beneficiaries of temporary protection in the EU.
Adult women made up almost half (44.8 per cent) of the beneficiaries. Children accounted for almost one-third (31.8 per cent), while adult men comprised less than a quarter (23.4 per cent) of the total.
This data refers to the attribution of temporary protection status based on the Council Implementing Decision 2022/382 of 4 March 2022, establishing the existence of a mass influx of displaced people from Ukraine due to the Russian war of aggression against Ukraine, and introducing temporary protection.
On June 25 2024, the European Council adopted the decision to extend the temporary protection for these people from March 4 2025 to March 4 2026.
(Archive photo, from March 2022: UNHCR/ Chris Melzer)
