More than two million people (as of Wednesday, March 9, 2,155,271, according to the United Nations Refugee Agency, UNHCR) have left Ukraine since Russia's invasion of its territory on February 24. data of the United Nations Refugee Agency, UNHCR) have left Ukraine since Russia's invasion of its territory on February 24, and an estimated four million are expected to do so as the invasion progresses.

Due to the geographic status of the country, the only route of flight for those displaced by the war is (with the exception of Moldova) to member states of the European Union (EU).

In an unprecedented act and in record time, the EU adopted only a week after the outbreak of the conflict an Implementing Decision from committee initiating temporary protection for displaced Ukrainians on the territory of the EU.

This is the first time that the EU has decided to use the temporary protection mechanism established in the Temporary Protection Directive, an instrument adopted more than twenty years ago and conceived precisely after the experience of the war in the former Yugoslavia to deal with the arrival of refugees in massive flows that make it impossible to examine their asylum applications individually.

To understand the scope of this decision, which requires the unanimity of 26 EU member states (all except Denmark), it is necessary to analyze it in its international and European context.

Like any armed conflict, the invasion of Ukraine causes massive displacement of people with different legal statuses: nationals, foreigners, refugees from other countries... Their immediate needs are the same; however, the international response is different.

Why this different consideration in the face of similar needs? The answer to this question is complex and requires a look at the reality of the International Office, based on the division of the world into sovereign states.

The state as a person under international law exercises its sovereignty with respect to its territory and its population. Thus, the first link between a person and a state is that of nationality. The status of persons who do not have a nationality (stateless persons) or who, having a nationality, cannot effectively enjoy it (refugees) constitutes an anomaly at the international level, which calls for international cooperation between states to take over the protection that the state of origin is unable or unwilling to offer. Thus arises the international regime of refugee protection.

The international refugee protection regime, today reflected in the United Nations Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees of 1951 and its subsequent protocol of 1967, is the response of international law to the status of people whose links with their state of origin are broken. This regime has its origins in the protection granted in the framework of the League of Nations in the 20's and 30's of the 20th century, when the different European states came together in the commitment to offer protection to refugees fleeing armed conflicts, persecution and genocide.

In that first phase of the system, protection was conceived collectively for groups defined by national origin: Russians, Armenians, Assyrians, Assyro-Chaldeans, Syrians, Kurds, Turks and, later, Germans.

Later, the system that emerged within the United Nations sought to respond to the millions of European refugees after World War II. It then adopted a definition of refugee centered on the concept of persecution, and not on national origin, which can be applied at all times and in all circumstances and defines a refugee as any person who, owing to a well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group group or political opinion, cannot avail himself of the protection of the country of his nationality or, in the case of stateless persons, of the country of his habitual residency program .

Thus, the protection granted by the international community to people who are forced to flee their countries is aimed at goal to restore this link between the person and the state, offering the refugee a state that offers him in a surrogate way the protection that his state of origin denies him.

The committee Decision of March 4 reflects this goal insofar as its scope of application limits the obligation to grant temporary protection to those who have nowhere else to go, i.e. displaced persons of Ukrainian nationality and refugees who have been granted asylum in Ukraine, in both cases provided they were residing in Ukraine prior to the invasion, as well as their family members.

With regard to other categories of persons, the directive also requires the protection of foreigners who had their permanent residency program in Ukraine, but only when they "cannot return to their country or region of origin in safe and durable conditions", and leaves it to the member states to decide whether to apply temporary protection to these persons or to offer them a similar status outside EU law, regulated by their domestic legislation.

In the case of foreigners who were residing in Ukraine at the time of the invasion, but had not yet attained permanent resident status (as is the case for the thousands of foreigners of African origin who are university students in Ukraine), the directive leaves member states the choice of whether or not to grant them temporary protection.

Temporary protection guarantees access to employment, to Education and training professional, to an adequate accommodation , to attendance medical care, to financial aid social and food assistance and to the reunification of families dispersed in different member states who have been separated by the circumstances of the flight.

The duration of the temporary protection will initially be one year, automatically extendable for periods of six months for a maximum of one year deadline . If after these initial two years the status has not ceased, the committee of the EU may adopt a new decision to extend the temporary protection for a maximum of one year.

With the decision of March 4, Europe regains the role it has always had in the establishment and development of the international regime for the protection of refugees, which is a reflection of the historical figure of asylum, protected by article 18 of the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights and considered a general principle of Union law derived from the constitutional traditions common to its member states(see Opinion of the Advocate General, paragraph 21, in the Elgafaji case before the EU Court).