Following Russia’s invasion and military aggression against Ukraine, the European Union, in implementing its founding principles of solidarity, decided to implement Directive 2001/55/EC establishing temporary protection.
This protection instrument can be activated by the European Union ‘in the event of a mass influx or imminent mass influx of displaced persons from third countries who cannot return to their country of origin’ to guarantee ‘immediate and temporary protection to displaced persons’. Therefore, temporary protection aims to provide as quickly as possible a form of protection for people who are forced to flee a country in large numbers without having to initiate an application for international protection and wait for its outcome. But it also aims, as a European instrument, at allowing immediate reception in the various countries of the Union in a balanced way.
Despite being written in 2001, this directive had never been implemented by the European Union. Why is this?
Why all people who have fled wars around the world in recent decades haven’t been protected?