You can find more about helping refugees from Ukraine
559 million euros in advance payments to help refugees to be used immediately – as the correspondent Katarzyna Szymańska-Borginon has established, Poland is to be obtained from the European Union funds. This is the highest advance that was granted in relation to the necessity to organize assistance.
Poland with the largest advance to help refugees from Ukraine
The money from the EU fund can be used to support one-day refugees – the conditions are 40 euro per week for 13 weeks.
As reported by Szymańska-Borginon, the advance comes from the React EU Fund. First, it was to be used to fight the effects of the pandemic, and now – to support people fleeing the war. In total, 3.4 billion euros will be used for this. Thanks to this, the budgets of the Member States that most actively support refugees from Ukraine will not be so burdened.
The amount of support depended on the scale of the aid provided. It was crucial in which countries, in the first month of the war in Ukraine, the number of refugees admitted exceeded 1%. their population. In such situations, it increased the amount of the advance to 45 percent.
Poland received EUR 559 million, Romania 450, Hungary – less than 300, Czech Republic – 283, Slovakia – 209, Bulgaria – 148.
In total, Poland will receive over a billion euro from the React-EU Fund to be used to help refugees. The amount referred to above is a 45% advance payment that can be used immediately.
What can this money be spent on? Including for direct help in the amount of 40 euros per person per week. RMF FM asked the Ministry of Foreign Affairs if Poland had already taken the money, but received no answer. It is also not known what specific plans the Polish government has in relation to this money.
The government has underestimated the funds necessary to help refugees? “The calculations are out of date”
The Ministry of Funds and Regional Policy said at the end of March that “there are no new funds from REACT-EU to help Polish refugees from Ukraine. There is only a more favorable advance payment.”
The actions of the European Commission consist in the reclassification of the existing instruments. Poland used the funds from the 2014-2020 perspective and distributed the funds available under REACT EU. Need for fresh resources. Need for quick approval of the National Reconstruction Plan
– then submitted by the Minister of Funds and Regional Policy, Grzegorz Puda. However, there is no approval of funds from the Reconstruction Fund, because Poland has still not met the conditions of the European Commission regarding the removal of the Disciplinary Chamber (). Minister Piotr Nowak, who announced the imminent allocation of funds to Poland, lost his position, and on April 4, the prime minister said: “Poland is a sovereign country, we have our rules and this is how we will define the boundary conditions that are acceptable to us.”
In turn, in recent days, Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki repeated that Poland has not yet received funding from the European Union in connection with the aid granted to refugees from Ukraine fleeing to our country. – I can confirm that we have not received any new financing – said the Prime Minister on Thursday. – We only got permission to move one drawer in our own wardrobe to another drawer in the same wardrobe, so this is not any very real help. Nevertheless, we conduct this dialogue with complete calmness, understanding – he added, pointing out that “what needs to be financed now is financed from our domestic expenditure.”
In an interview with Gazeta.pl, prof. Artur Nowak-Far from the Law Institute of the Warsaw School of Economics and former Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs.
– If the government wanted to get money from the EU, it would get it. But it has to be done in good time. You have to strive for EU money. And the government behaves as if the European Commission was to strive for Poland to get the money, he said. As he explained, funds are available. – As part of the cohesion fund package, the program that allows you to get extra money has been increased. Member States can apply for these funds, he assured.
“The government has underestimated the funds that are necessary to accept refugees from Ukraine. There is also no idea what to do next,” wrote the money.pl portal on 8 April. According to journalists, the government came up with the idea to redirect funds from regional programs in the amount of EUR 131 million and EUR 50 million from the POWER program to help refugees. Local government officials in an interview with the portal said that they were also left without government money. – One and a half months have passed and we have not received any government funding so far. We were promised that they would soon flow into our budget, but so far this has not happened. We are talking about covering the living costs of refugees staying with us. Therefore, from the very beginning, we use our own funds for this purpose – said Michał Hebda, vice-mayor of the Niepołomice commune. In turn, she recently announced that Poland may need one billion zlotys a month to spend on refugees. “The calculations that the government made when creating the special act in terms of financial security just two weeks ago are no longer valid” – the daily reported at the beginning of April. As it was added, as of March 30, the Chancellery of the Prime Minister allocated PLN 107.8 million from the general reserve of the state budget to help refugees coming from Ukraine. “To this must be added the expenditure of the Governmental Agency for Strategic Reserves, which has already exceeded PLN 238.4 million” – indicated.
The Polish Border Guard informs that from the first day of the war in Ukraine (February 24), 2.78 million refugees from Ukraine crossed the Polish-Ukrainian border.
Source: Gazeta
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