Slovakia is requesting a new fund from the Union to cover health costs for refugees – euractiv.sk
Slovakia has signed a joint statement by the 11th Ministry of Health, which calls on the Commission to activate emergency financial support for the country in the front line of the refugee crisis. According to them, Eurofunds will not be enough to cover the costs of providing health care to people fleeing the war.
Eleven EU member states have written an offer to the European Commission to create a special fund to cover the costs associated with health care provided to Ukrainian refugees.
The statement was initiated by Poland at a last meeting of the EU Ministry of Health, which took place on Tuesday (March 29) in Brussels.
The largest waves of Ukrainian refugees are facing countries bordering Ukraine. According to the UN, the most affected country is Poland, where about 2.4 loves of refugees have already arrived. The Ministries of Bulgaria, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Lithuania, Latvia, Poland, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia are signed under the proposal.
Eastern countries have experienced increased pressure on health care during the pandemic. Care for refugees from Ukraine will now be maintained.
They therefore call for the creation of a health fund by activating Article 2 European regulation on the provision of emergency support within the EU. Ten says that emergency support can be received by the Council on the basis of a proposal from the European Commission in the event of an ongoing or potential disaster.
“The scale of the challenges in healthcare is huge,” the ministers argue. “Providing healthcare to Ukrainian citizens is a commitment for us, but also a huge financial effort, and that is why the EU should provide us with funding,” they call on the agency.
The protection of children is a priority
However, it does not yet appear that the European Commission plans to comply with the call of the eleven ministers.
At their request, following a ministerial meeting, the Brussels-based portal EURACTIV.com asked Health Commissioner Stella Kyriakides. In response, it will propose all the applications that already work to support health systems in the EU.
“We are doing everything we can to support Member States with their unprecedented health needs. But we also need to address other needs, such as education and housing, with child protection being a key priority, ”said Kyriakides.
Kyriakides emphasized that the country could use the 17 euros available from EU Cohesion Fund (Eurofunds) for healthcare. From this package of money, 3.4 billion euros will be immediately available to the refugees.
“There are significant resources available to support health expenditures that the country can use for this purpose,” Kyriakides concluded.
French Health Minister Olivier Véran that other countries have expressed interest in the health fund and other countries have confirmed greater financial support for the country in the front line of the refugee crisis.
However, he reiterated Kyriakides’ response to the potential use of other Union funds, stressing that they were already taking place, such as the release of hospital beds and the admission of Ukrainian hospital patients in other countries.
“We want to ensure that health care systems in affected countries such as Poland are not delivered,” Véran said.
Eurofunds will not be enough
At the beginning of March, the European Commission presented the CARE initiative, in which it proposed the rules of the EU Cohesion Policy, which quickly expanded the Eurofunds to help refugees from Ukraine.
CARE will make it possible to look for unspent Eurofunds from the 2014-2020 programming period in the operational programs to address the refugee crisis. How informed last week the Minister of Regional Development Veronika Remišová (For People), Slovak ministries thus found 818 million euros of non-contracted Eurofunds. Most of them are at the Ministry of Education.
According to Remišová, however, CARE alone will not be enough, because the member states need “much more aid” from the European Union. He also argues that Eurofunds should mainly serve to redress regional disparities and should only be an additional resource in resolving the refugee crisis.
The Deputy Prime Minister discussed this last week with the ministers of the countries most affected by the crisis – in addition to the V4 countries, they are also Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania, Romania and Bulgaria.
“We agreed that pressure is needed on the European Commission to find sources of funding for the effects of the migration crisis beyond the CARE package,” Remišová said.
The Ministry of Health made the same statement on this week’s statement.
“We call on the measures to present as soon as possible the mechanisms it offers to use other EU funds to finance the necessary measures, including the launch of the next CARE II package,” the ministers wrote.
Since the beginning of the Russian aggression in Slovakia before the war, about 300,000 people have fled.