Norway stops guaranteeing asylum to citizens from “safe areas” of Ukraine

Follow the latest news on the war in Ukraine live

The Government advocates strengthening immigration controls to avoid “disproportionate” quotas

September 27 () –

The Government of Norway announced this Friday the introduction of a series of measures to increase immigration control in the country, which includes no longer automatically guaranteeing asylum to citizens from areas considered safe in Ukraine.

Thus, asylum applications by Ukrainians coming from western areas of the country, further away from the war front, will be “reviewed one by one” instead of being resolved immediately and positively for the applicants. In this sense, the Government plans to reverse the rule that has governed since the invasion of Ukraine began in February 2022 and that allowed the authorities to provide “collective protection” to every Ukrainian citizen without having to go through prior procedures.

However, the country has sheltered some 85,000 Ukrainians – out of a total of 5.6 million inhabitants – a very significant number compared to its neighbors. “We cannot continue to accept this disproportionate entry of people compared to similar countries, such as the Nordic ones,” said Norwegian Justice Minister Emilie Enger Mehl during a press conference.

“The migration that arrives in Norway must be controlled and be sustainable, not disproportionate. That is why the Government is introducing some restrictions,” the minister clarified, according to information collected by the Norwegian newspaper ‘VG’.

The country’s migration authorities will now address these requests individually for residents of six western Ukrainian provinces considered safe: Lviv, Volhynia, Transcarpathia, Ivano-Frankivsk, Ternopil and Rivne.

The measure is due, according to the Government, to the fact that the growing migratory flow has significantly increased pressure on housing, the health system and schools in some cities. Enger, for his part, has also warned that a large number of the migrants were “men of fighting age”, a relevant detail now that kyiv faces serious difficulties in recruiting troops.