Norway will no longer automatically grant asylum to all Ukrainians, the government said Friday, with applicants arriving from western Ukraine to be examined case-by-case.
After Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Norwegian authorities decided to provide “collective protection” to all Ukrainian refugees by granting automatic asylum.
In the past two and a half years, Norway, a country of 5.6 million inhabitants, has taken in some 85,000 Ukrainians, which, according to Oslo, is more than its Nordic neighbours.
“We can’t take in a disproportionate share of displaced people compared to similar countries, such as the Nordic countries,” Justice Minister Emilie Enger Mehl told a press conference.
Immigration authorities will from now handle asylum requests individually for residents of six regions in western Ukraine, considered safe because they are far from the front line.
The six are Lviv, Volhynia, Transcarpathia, Ivano-Frankivsk, Ternopil and Rivne.
The government said the decision was taken because the high number of refugees was putting a strain on housing, health care and schools in some cities.
Enger Mehl also noted that “a rising share” of the Ukrainian asylum seekers were “men, including many of fighting age”, at a time when Ukraine is struggling to recruit troops to fight the Russian offensive.
Norway has gradually tightened its asylum conditions in the past two years in a bid to limit the number of arrivals and to incite Ukrainians to find work.
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