EU funding for Ukrainian refugees insufficient, minister warns
The EU's offer of EUR 500 million to aid Ukrainian war refugees is insufficient, as the estimated support costs for one million refugees could come to as much as PLN 10 billion (EUR 2 billion), a Polish deputy foreign minister said on Tuesday.
Pawel Jablonski told the Polsat News channel that the costs are high because the money will have to cover health and social insurance, and education for children.
"This amount will certainly not be enough, especially as it is to be distributed among all (refugee-accepting - PAP) countries," said Jablonski. "According to initial estimates, a million refugees will cost several billion zloty, even as much as 10 billion if we add education, healthcare and social insurance. And this is an estimate for a million people, whereas we will have many more."
He added that Poland was expecting considerably more than a million refugees from Ukraine and appealed for more financial support from the EU.
Jablonski also commented on rumours that Poland planned to give fighter aircraft to Ukraine and pointed out that all such decisions belonged to the Nato command.
