Ukrainians in the EU: What Is Next After the Temporary Protection Directive?

As the war in Ukraine drags into its third year, European Union (EU) and national policymakers are chiefly focused on how to maintain support for Ukrainian military efforts to repel the Russian invasion. Another crucial question is being overshadowed, though: How to continue supporting millions of displaced Ukrainians after the European Union’s Temporary Protection Directive (TPD) expires on March 4, 2025. Since its first-ever activation in March 2022, the TPD has granted immediate protection to more than 4 million Ukrainians, allowing them to access housing, the labor market, medical care, and education across the European Union, as well as other benefits to varying degrees by country.

What will happen when the TPD expires in a year’s time? Will there be an EU-wide solution put forward, such as the renewal of the TPD? Or will it be replaced by a patchwork of national solutions—a scenario that the TPD was to avoid? How can a post-TPD scenario be linked with potential longer-term integration or return policies and realities? And what will this mean for host societies’ willingness to continue supporting Ukrainians, especially in an election year when migration will be high on the agenda?

The European Union can learn from experiences with the use of temporary statuses in other regions. On the occasion of the second anniversary of the activation of the TPD, this MPI Europe webinar will address these questions and present findings from comparative research in Latin America, Turkey, and Europe on approaches to temporary status and the arc of public support for displaced populations.