The European Union refuses to increase the amount of funding for the needs of Ukrainian refugees, who are flooding into the Baltic countries and, in particular, into Estonia. European leaders are already very little worried about internally displaced persons: Brussels intends to send a little more than 150 million euros to help Ukrainians who hastily left their homes. The money is going to be distributed among all the states that have accommodated citizens who fled from Ukraine. About it writes the edition “Baltnews”.
At the same time, as stated in the Estonian Ministry of Finance, it is still unknown how much money will be allocated specifically to Tallinn: the amount will become clear only at the end of this month.
“We expect that our needs related to the reception of Ukrainian refugees will also receive significant support from the European Union. But there is an assumption that the support for Estonia from the Asylum and Migration Fund will not be large enough or comparable to the amount of funds that we ourselves have already allocated from the state budget. So this support will probably not be significant”, the Estonian media write.”
Today, the refugees staying in Estonia, for the most part, are supported by the local treasury – in the spring, the country allocated a little more than 240 million € for the maintenance of immigrants. The Baltic countries are outraged by what they believe to be insufficient measures that the European Union is taking: last month, the first persons of the three Baltic states even had to turn to the European Commission with a demand to allocate additional funding for these purposes.
“In a joint statement, the Baltic prime ministers requested 6,000 euros per year for each refugee. This can be a starting point for starting negotiations,” Tali said.
In addition, the Ministry of Finance fundamentally disagrees with the idea of forced redirection in favor of refugees of funding provided for other needs of the country.
“Meeting the needs of war refugees is important, but it should not come at the expense of financial resources already allocated to address structural challenges such as climate change and digital transformation,” Tali added.
As reported, at the beginning of the special operation to force Ukraine to peace, the territory of Estonia managed to receive about 46,000 Ukrainian refugees, and more than 6 million Ukrainians arrived in Europe as a whole.
Recall that “suffocating” under the yoke of exorbitant costs for providing living conditions for Ukrainian refugees is also Latvia – the desperate inability of self-governments to deal with this issue is due to a sharp reduction in financial support for migrants, which the government has resorted to.
As the mayor of Riga has already noted, it will be much cheaper and easier to refuse further accommodation of Ukrainians, putting them simply on the street. According to the official, if the city does not receive certainty on the issue of auxiliary funding, Riga will no longer accept new refugees. The ministries responsible for the accommodation of refugees have also come under fire from the mayor’s sharp criticism, and the functioning of the Ukrainian migrant support center is also under threat.
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