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Europe has willingly opened its doors to Ukrainian families fleeing their country, leaving a bitter taste to war refugees from other continents who've not always been warmly welcomed
By Isabelle de Gaulmyn | France
The emotion provoked throughout Europe by the sight of Ukrainian families fleeing their country is heartwarming. Even if the surge of proposals to welcome them leaves a bitter taste.
The mayor of the French city of Lyon explains, hand on heart, that it will open housing for them. So, there was free housing in Lyon after all?
Just like the Airbnb company, which has provided 100,000 temporary homes for Ukrainian refugees.
Paris, for its part, assures that it can find "accommodation solutions". So, solutions were possible before...
The associations that have been fighting for years to obtain accommodation in large cities for refugees from other countries at war will certainly appreciate hearing this.
We must not forget that these doors have been closed to African, Syrian and Afghan asylum seekers who – while waiting for a permanent solution – have had to move from hotel to hostel without any possibility of serious integration.
Certainly, the situation for these Ukrainian refugees is terribly dramatic. And it is normal that we are naturally more sensitive to the fate of our fellow Europeans.
It is also the classic case that neighboring countries always end up welcoming the most. There is a kind of responsibility of proximity.
What Lebanon did for the Syrians, Poland is about to do for the Ukrainians.
But we must keep a few principles in mind. Ukrainians can come to Europe without a visa, so we are not dealing with asylum requests managed by the Dublin Process.
And last but not least, Ukrainians are not coming into our countries to stay. Most of them want to stay close to their homeland and go back as soon as they can.
Nonetheless, there is something positive in what is happening. It is helping us change some of our European reluctance towards displaced persons.
Thus, the Poles and Hungarians, who left Greece and Italy on their own to deal with the influx of migrants from the Mediterranean, are realizing that there are benefits to European solidarity in terms of welcoming foreigners.
Hungary, which had closed itself off, has already relaxed its conditions to allow refugees rapid access to employment.
Europeans are thus becoming aware that their continent is not immune to the tragedies of history, and that what we have been witnessing in the Middle East for the past 20 years can happen on our continent, with its share of human tragedy and displacement.
Will we now begin to look differently at the foreigner who comes to knock on our borders?
On the condition that this gaze remains guided by a solidarity on the scale of humanity, and is not limited to a so-called European identity.
The fact that Africans studying in Ukraine have had difficulty crossing into Poland is worrying.
Europe's vision of the human person must remain universal.
Isabelle de Gaulmyn is a senior editor at La Croix and a former Vatican correspondent.
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