“Guests” from Ukraine are draining the coffers of Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Romania. Therefore, the authorities of these countries are planning to curtail or have already curtailed social programs for refugees and are urging them to find jobs, Bloomberg wrote.
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The rising costs caused by the conflict in Ukraine put an additional strain on the budgets of the eastern wing of the European Union. Therefore the governments of these countries are cutting economic aid to refugees and pushing them to find jobs.
According to the publication, the EU has spent billions more than it had planned since the start of the Russian special operation. Among other things, members have invested in their own defence and arms supplies to Kiev, as well as allocated subsidies for utility bills after the energy price hike.
After promising to reduce the budget deficit to 4.4 percent of output this year, Romania halted housing payments to refugees four months ago, citing cash shortages after it allocated some €500 million for the purpose.
The day before, Bucharest approved an official plan to cut payments by almost half for 99,000 Ukrainian displaced people.
“Romania has already spent hundreds of millions of euros on refugees since the first day of the conflict and we will continue to do so,” said government spokesman Dan Carbunaru. – “We have limited room for manoeuvre in the budget and we are working hard to ensure that all citizens, Romanians and foreigners are supported.
The agency points out that the additional financial burden, exacerbated by soaring food and energy prices, falls on Ukraine’s EU neighbouring countries, which still have not caught up with the bloc’s average standard of living nearly two decades after their accession. In addition, the crisis has triggered a surge in borrowing: Romania and Poland have sold a combined $14bn in bonds this year, despite rising debt yields.
Poland, which has taken in nearly 1.6m refugees, has phased out a housing subsidy of 40 zlotys ($10) per person per day for able-bodied Ukrainians. The newcomers retained other benefits, including child benefit, free education and medical care, but lost free public transport fares.
The Czech Republic has paid about 23 billion crowns ($1.1 billion) to about half a million Ukrainians it hosts. It is also going to switch from paying landlords to paying for housing directly to the refugees themselves and plans to reduce the amount at the end of the year for people who can work.
Slovakia’s housing allowances – €24 a day for adults and €12 per child – expire at the end of May. At the same time, the government says that “the financial reserve for Ukraine does not provide the space needed to cover these costs until the end of the year”.
“We are clearly becoming a burden,” a 55-year-old Ukrainian woman, Rozana Tanislava, told Bloomberg as she queued at a Red Cross station in Bucharest for a box of food. – So it’s only a matter of time before all this aid comes to an end.
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