The Diplomat
The Minister of Interior, Fernando Grande-Marlaska, met yesterday with the Ukrainian ambassador to Spain, Serhii Pohoreltsev, to strengthen collaboration between the two countries in security matters and to address the temporary protection of more than 175,000 displaced Ukrainian residents in Spain.
During the meeting, as reported by the Ministry, Grande-Marlaska advanced to Pohoreltsev that the situation in Ukraine since the Russian invasion will be one of the priorities of the Spanish Presidency of the EU in the field of Interior. “We will address the issue in all the Councils and the informal meeting of Interior Ministers, in Logroño, will have a specific session dedicated to the Russian aggression,” he explained.
The meeting also addressed the temporary protection of Ukrainian displaced persons. In this area, Grande-Marlaska assured Pohoreltsev that the Spanish Presidency will discuss the extension of this figure beyond March 2024, the expiration date of the current protection period.
The Temporary Protection Directive was activated by the EU Council of Interior Ministers on March 4, 2022, for the first time since its creation in 2001. Spain launched the urgent application and processing procedure only six days after its activation. The processing and granting of temporary protection corresponds to the Office of Asylum and Refuge (OAR) of the Ministry of the Interior and the National Police. Last March, the European Commission informed the Council of Interior Ministers, held in Brussels, of the extension of temporary protection until March 2024. The temporary protection mechanism grants immediate residence and work permits to citizens displaced by the Russian invasion.
For his part, the Ukrainian ambassador thanked Spain for its efforts in granting more than 175,000 temporary protections to Ukrainian citizens since the activation of the mechanism in March 2022, a figure that places Spain as the fifth country that has processed the most applications, only behind Poland, Germany, Czech Republic and Italy, all of them geographically closer to Ukraine. Grande-Marlaska also informed the ambassador of the progressive decrease in the number of applications in recent months, reaching an average of 150 requests per day, which are mostly processed in the autonomous communities of Valencia, Catalonia, Andalusia and Madrid.
Likewise, the Minister of the Interior showed Pohoreltsev the interest in “strengthening cooperation in the operational field with the Ukrainian security forces” and recalled the activation of the Police Support Team (EPA), formed by agents of the National Police and the Civil Guard, which travelled to Ukraine in December to provide technical and scientific police support to the General Prosecutor’s Office of Ukraine in the investigation of crimes against humanity.
“The work of the EPA has been a great operational success and has developed a high quality work,” said Grande-Marlaska, who especially highlighted the joint action of different capacities and specialties of the National Police and Civil Guard, “with logistical needs and special human and material resources for deployment in a country at war.” The minister advanced that the EPA’s work on the ground has allowed the 3D reconstruction, through the use of its own drones and high technology, of 15 critical and civilian infrastructure facilities that were damaged and destroyed as a result of the impact of Russian missiles.
The meeting at the headquarters of the Ministry of the Interior also reinforced the commitment of both countries to sign soon the Spanish-Ukrainian Protocol on the Readmission of Persons, in implementation of the Agreement between the European Union and Ukraine.
