After Russia's military aggression against Ukraine in 2022, millions of Ukrainians sought refuge in EU countries. To assist them, the EU Council activated the Temporary Protection Directive, granting access to healthcare, accommodation, employment, education, and social protection. Despite ongoing war, Ukrainian refugees face challenges in settling and rebuilding their lives. The RRR-MFA/SMS project, funded by Germany and the Czech Republic, established Ukrainian Consultation Centers in Germany, Poland, and the Czech Republic. We interviewed the project team to learn more about this flagship initiative.
Interview with Roman MAKUKHA – Project Manager, Magda SABADELLO – Project Officer and Mariia GIEDROYC – Project Assistant
Why did the need emerge to establish the Ukrainian Consultation Centres in Prague, Berlin, and Gdansk?
We realised that even though the host countries provide a wide variety of services and information, many times, Ukrainian citizens, primarily women with underage children or elderly, are looking for face-to-face consultations in their native language. Imagine a young woman who had to flee Kharkiv in a matter of hours after the deadly bombardment, taking relative children with her in addition to her own, and seeking refuge in Germany. How can she obtain temporary protection without valid IDs? What happens to the children under her guardianship? How can she get passports and official documents for these children? Or someone with elderly parents requiring urgent medical care, coming to a foreign country, not knowing who to turn to for advice, not being able to understand the local healthcare regulations, which hospital do they go to? How do they find support? We see numerous tragic stories like these, with inquiries that cannot be solved by the hotlines or information websites alone; we see many people who don't speak the local languages, struggling to resolve difficult situations. And for this reason, exactly, we decided to pilot the Consultation Centres in Prague, Berlin and Gdansk in May 2023 to support Ukrainian displaced persons in vulnerable situations in getting personalised consultations in their native language in each of the host countries.
What was the motivation for the donor countries to support the project?
Our project donors, Germany and the Czech Republic, host a large number of Ukrainian migrants; Over one million are currently residing in Germany, close to half a million in the Czech Republic and over one and a half million in Poland. The donors are interested to see that the state services they provide to Ukrainians can be fully utilised. Thus, additional support and assistance to those who may or may not understand the local rules, regulations, or even the language, is exactly what the Consultation Centres provide. The Consultation Centres link the consular offices of Ukraine with the state authorities in the host countries as well as with other agencies, institutions and NGOs. Therefore, Ukrainian citizens can be provided with multifaceted support and assistance.
It is important to understand that we are still in the piloting phase, and the Consultation Centres have already had many visitors, with numerous calls, visits and emails in the first week of opening. We expect the numbers to increase significantly as the Centres become more widely known among the Ukrainian communities.
Could you elaborate on the specific services offered? How many people are the centres expecting?
The Centres provide a number of services to the visitors, including but not limited to rights and obligations under temporary protection, matters related to accommodation, healthcare or employment, obtaining Ukrainian IDs and passports, pre-consular consultations, Ukrainian government services and programmes. Furthermore, the Centres provide references and referrals to various other service providers, such as host-government assistance, NGOs, diaspora organisations or others.
It is also clear that one centre, for example in Berlin, providing services to over one million displaced Ukrainian citizens scattered across Germany is not enough. Thus, the piloting phase complements similar initiatives but shows the first signs of impact from the beginning.
How do the Consultation Centres collaborate with Ukrainian consulates and assist in pre-consular support and workload management?
The Consultation Centres in Prague and Gdansk work very closely with the Ukrainian consulates, both with enormous support from the Consuls of Ukraine in Poland and the Czech Republic. Needless to say, the Centre staff supports the consular offices by arranging pre-consular consultations for Ukrainian citizens, meaning they help the visitors with filling out paperwork, obtaining the right documents, answering questions on consular procedures, and more. During our initial assessment visits to the three destination countries, we saw that following the arrival of a large number of Ukrainian displaced persons in the host countries, the consular offices found themselves understaffed and overworked, thus, hindering many service and assistance provision to their citizens. Now, the Consultation Centres support the offices by taking in visitors prior to their visit to the Consulates, therefore, reducing the workload of the consular officers.
What kind of additional activities are planned to involve other stakeholders in the activities of the Consultation Centres?
Right now, we are all excited to see the progress of the Consultation Centres in the three cities. We are very much looking forward to assessing the initial months to observe which additional activities we could implement to support the operation of the Centres. As the staff on the ground gains experience and expertise, we will carry out outreach sessions outside of the cities, in certain rural areas, in order to reach as many Ukrainians in the area who may not be able to come to the Centres. All three Centres also have hotlines and email addresses and are reachable by phone or email. We plan to have the Centres support consulates in joining regular consular visiting sessions in rural areas, focus on outreach information campaigns via social media platforms on troublesome topics, organise networking events among key service providers, including local authorities, NGOs, diaspora organisations and more.
Is this initiative something that is expected to be replicated in other locations as well? Is there already something in the pipeline?
As a matter of fact, we just launched a Call Centre that is operational as of 15 June 2023 and is located in the Ukrainian Consulate premises in Warsaw, Poland. We have teamed up with a Ukrainian NGO, which has extensive experience running such a Call Centre for Ukrainian citizens, getting calls from countries all over Europe.
How do you envision the future role of the Consultation Centres in supporting safe return and reintegration once the conflict in Ukraine ends?
Unfortunately, no one knows when the ongoing military aggression will end in Ukraine. Of course, we hope that it will be sooner than later, considering the number of Ukrainians who want to return based on the surveys at this moment. Therefore, we plan to transform the Consultation Centres into information points for those who will return to Ukraine. We will link the Centres with Ukrainian state agencies and initiatives that will provide services and programmes for returnees, with our Centres. We plan to provide consultations and information on safe return and reintegration, including rules, regulations and procedures on how to exit the host countries as well. The project team will assess the needs and challenges prior to re-launching the Centres for return and reintegration purposes. We will keep closely monitoring the situation in Ukraine as well as the ongoing Ukrainian Government efforts, and in close cooperation with respective authorities, we will try to support the process of return.