The protection of Ukrainian migrants in Portugal: From the International and European Regime to Portuguese Law

Abstract

The war in Ukraine caused a major humanitarian crisis, leading thousands of civilians to leave the country and seek refuge in third countries. In this perspective, rather than being migrants, the people fleeing this war shall be considered as refugees in accordance with the 1951 Refugee Convention and its 1967 Protocol. Council Directive 2001/55, of July 2001 created a special procedure to deal with a “mass influx” of people in need of international protection. Due to the war in Ukraine, this Directive was triggered by EU Council Decision 2022/382 of 4 March 2022. In this sequence, in response to the need for assistance to and protection of refugees, Portugal presented a plan for their reception, having established a legal regime delimiting criteria for their protection, as well as the scope of temporary protection to be granted under the decree-law 24-B/2022. We propose to analyse the protection regime granted, considering the criteria defined by Public International Law and European Union Law, to assess the convenience, opportunity and sufficiency of the measures implemented before proposing solutions consistent with the humanitarian crisis-situation experienced in Europe, and the reception and integration of these migrants.