Sheltering the homeless : Legal solutions to provide accommodation for refugees from Ukraine in Poland
Refugees, Resources, Security, and Beyond : Legal and Broader Impacts of the War in Ukraine on Hungary and Poland / editors Réka Friedery, Csaba Weiner and Boldizsár Szentgáli-Tóth. Budapest : Akadémiai Kiadó, 2025, s. 36-45.
The direct result of full-scale Russian aggression against Ukraine in 2022 was a massive influx of Ukrainian people into European Union countries. In Poland—a country bordering Ukraine — a year after the attack, almost 1 million Ukrainian citizens enjoyed temporary protection, of whom about 87% were women and children. In the early days of the conflict, the Ukrainian–Polish border was crossed by up to 95,000 people a day, and from February 24, 2022 to March 3, 2022, Border Guard officers allowed 575,100 people fleeing the war to enter Poland. In the capital city of Warsaw alone, up to 40,000 people a day applied for help. The refugees required immediate assistance in almost every aspect of life (including food, legalization of their stay, transportation). The sheer number of arrivals, the need for immediate action, the inability to prepare in advance (including a regulatory deficit), as well as unfavorable winter conditions, generated problems that required quick and adequate solutions. The legislator’s response to these challenges was the enactment of the Act of March 12, 2022 on assistance to Ukrainian citizens in connection with the armed conflict on the territory of that country (hereinafter: “Special Act”), which sets out assistance to Ukrainian citizens “seeking shelter”2 on the territory of the Republic of Poland. One of the areas regulated in the Special Act was the issue of accommodation assistance. Indeed, the urgent need was to provide each person with a place to stay, with adequate sanitary facilities, protection from the weather, and a sense of security. For some people, it was sufficient to arrange temporary shelter for a few days. However, a large group, especially children, women, the elderly and the sick, required long-term assistance. At the same time, it should be borne in mind that in the two years since the outbreak of the war, the circumstances and needs of the refugees changed, resulting in changes in the Special Act. This chapter focuses on the legal solutions for providing accommodation for refugees. To this end, the following sections of the paper outline preparations for the reception of refugees, state-organized assistance, state support for those providing accommodation for refugees and other forms of assistance.
The research was co-funded by the governments of the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, and Slovakia through the International Visegrad Fund under the Visegrad project 22320067. The Fund’s mission is to promote sustainable regional cooperation in Central Europe.
Prawne aspekty transplantacji
Ciało ludzkie w badaniach naukowych i praktyce medycznej : ujęcie transdyscyplinarne / redakcja naukowa dr hab. n. med. Jakub Pawlikowski. Warszawa : PZWL, 2020, s. 263-275.
Filozoficzne znaczenie wyjątku : refleksje na tle świata norm prawnych
Inność? Obcość? Norma? / redakcja naukowa Karoliny Zakrzewskiej. Warszawa : Wydawnictwo Fundacji Eryda, 2018. s. 23-45.
The purpose of this article is to present several areas in legal science to which an exception applies. In general, the exception allows for departure from general rules in a particular case. Extraordinary measures constitute a significant example of such a situation – in their course, while remaining within the limits of the law, certain freedoms and rights can be limited. Thanks to the exception, it’s also possible to diversify the legal situation of individual entities by departing from the principle of equality. The exception also plays a significant role in the process of determining the applicable law (rules of derogation) and it’s interpretation (exceptiones non sunt extendendae).
