Ukrainian refugees face continued uncertainty over residence status
In the media image: Fer Troulik on Unsplash
The long-term residence status of more than 140,000 Ukrainians in the Netherlands remains unclear. A ruling by the European Court of Justice will also add to the workload of the Immigration and Naturalisation Service. Mark Klaassen comments in an NOS interview.
For Ukrainians who arrived in the Netherlands after the outbreak of the war in 2022, the EU Temporary Protection Directive was applied for the first time. The scheme provides rapid protection without requiring every refugee to undergo an individual asylum procedure. Temporary protection has since been extended until March 2028. The Netherlands, however, linked temporary protection to an asylum application, after which the processing of those applications was put on hold.
However, the European Court of Justice recently ruled that asylum procedures may not be postponed in this way: asylum applications are separate from temporary protection. The Netherlands must therefore still assess all 140,000-plus applications. Mark Klaassen, assistant professor specialising in immigration law, says that this will place a significant additional burden on the Immigration and Naturalisation Service, which is already struggling with a substantial backlog. ‘It now faces a flood of additional cases to process.’
The arrangement also has legal consequences for the residence status of Ukrainians. As long as they remain under temporary protection, they do not accrue years of lawful residence towards a regular asylum-based residence permit. ‘With an asylum residence permit, you accumulate years of residence, and after five years you could in theory become a Dutch citizen. For Ukrainians, those years currently don’t count,’ Klaassen continues. As a result, many Ukrainians remain uncertain about whether, and how, they can secure a permanent right of residence in the Netherlands. Temporary protection is currently set to remain in place until March 2028, but what will happen after that? Until the Ministry has determined how the Netherlands will implement the ruling, this group of refugees will continue to face uncertainty about their future.
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Read the full article on the NOS (in Dutch)