L-R: Jean Asselborn, Luxembourg's Minister of Foreign & European Affairs, Minister of Immigration & Asylum; Gonzalo Vargas Llosa, UNHCR Representative; Alain Bliss, Deputy Director of the Directorate of Immigration;
Credit: MAEE
On Tuesday 5 April 2022, Jean Asselborn, Luxembourg's Minister of Foreign and European Affairs and Minister of Immigration and Asylum, accompanied by Gonzalo Vargas Llosa, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees' (UNHCR) Representative for European Union (EU) Affairs in Brussels, visited the new one-stop shop for Ukrainian refugees applying for temporary protection.
This administrative centre, which opened its doors in Luxembourg on 30 March 2022, brings together in the same building the services of the Directorate of Immigration, the judicial police, the National Reception Office (Office National de l'Accueil - ONA), the Ministry of Health, the Ministry of Education, Children and Youth and the financial services of POST Luxembourg. This centralisation of services allows people coming from Ukraine to carry out their various administrative procedures in one go, accompanied and supervised.
Minister Asselborn and UNCHR Representative Vargas Llosa had the opportunity to visit the various services of the one-stop shop and to talk with the agents on site. Luxembourg's Foreign Minister highlighted the importance of this system, which strengthens the authorities' processing capacities in the face of the influx of people fleeing the war in Ukraine and constitutes a central point of contact for administrative support and advice for these individuals.
Following this visit, Minister Asselborn received the UNCHR Representative at the Ministry of Foreign and European Affairs for an interview. The discussions focused in particular on the response of the UNHCR and the EU to the ongoing refugee crisis and the reception of displaced persons in Luxembourg.
