Forced Migration from Ukraine to the EU since the Outbreak of the Russian-Ukrainian war – with Focus on Hungary

Abstract

The article analyses the changing characteristics of migration from Ukraine to Hungary looking at the period between 2010 and 2023. Migration from Ukraine has undergone a number of changes during the period under study due to the socio-economic processes in Ukraine and the war that has broken out in the meantime. Of course, changes in the legal and economic characteristics of Hungary have also had an impact on migration between the two countries. The Council of the European Union has applied the Temporary Protection Directive (2001/55 EC Directive) since 4 March 2022. Since then the European Commission organises the collection and publication of data on temporary protection. The Commission has both activated the collection of statistics on persons granted temporary protection, as provided for in Article 4 of Regulation 862/2007 EC, and asked Member States to voluntarily accelerate the collection of data, with the first reference month being April 2022. The vast majority of Member States comply with the statistical data collection although with varying degrees of data coverage. The data show that migration from Ukraine has been one of the most important factors influencing the overall migration process in Hungary.