European Commission: EU funds will be used to help with refugee crisis

The European Commission is planning to use EU funds to help Ukrainian refugees, the EC’s Director-General for Employment Joost Korte said during a visit to the Czech Republic on Friday. Czechia could therefore receive unused funding from several of the EU’s operational subsidy programmes. The proposal counts on allocating EUR 40 a week per refugee for a period of three months.

Labour Minister Martina Štěpánková, who visited a Prague hotel that in now housing refugees together with Mr Korte on Friday, said that these funds will primarily come from programmes that are active through the EU‘s budget and have therefore been already mostly used up. She said that it will be necessary to look for new forms of funding as well.