On 26 June 2026, EU Interior Commissioner Magnus Brunner announced that the European Commission would propose removing Ukrainian men aged 23 to 60 from automatic temporary protection under EU law. The measure, he said, was "not a form of discrimination."
The Temporary Protection Directive has been in force for Ukrainian refugees since March 2022. It allows immediate access to residence, work, healthcare, and schooling without an individual asylum hearing. For all Ukrainians not covered by the new exclusion, the Commission proposes extending it until March 2028.
The exclusion applies to men who are legally prohibited from leaving Ukraine. Since February 2022, Ukraine has barred men aged 18 to 60 from crossing the border, with limited exceptions. Men in this category who are currently in the EU left before the ban tightened, or left under an exemption that has since closed, or left illegally. Under Ukrainian law, they are subject to military mobilisation. Under the Commission's proposal, they are no longer entitled to automatic EU protection.
Ukrainian law does not restrict only men from leaving the country. Women who have signed military contracts or are registered in military accounting face the same prohibition. The Commission's proposal applies to men.
The proposal was made at Ukraine's request.
In April 2022, the German Bundestag stated that "the path to the German and European asylum procedure is open" to Russian soldiers who laid down their arms. Russia had ordered men to fight. The EU offered protection.
Ukraine has ordered men to fight. The EU is removing it.
In January 2025, the United States suspended refugee admissions and began large-scale deportation operations. European governments described this as incompatible with international law and European values. The Commission tabled this proposal on 26 June 2026.
The EU arms Ukraine under the right of collective self-defence against illegal aggression. The conflict is serious enough to arm one side.
It is apparently not serious enough to protect those who do not wish to fight in it.
The proposal applies a single threshold: male, Ukrainian, aged 23 to 60. It does not ask where the man is from within Ukraine.
Men from Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson, Zaporizhzhia, and Crimea who cooperated with Russian-administered services under occupation -- to access healthcare, employment, pensions -- face prosecution for collaboration under Ukrainian law if they return. The proposal does not distinguish them from men who simply chose not to fight. Commissioner Brunner did not mention them.
The principle of non-refoulement -- the prohibition on returning people to places where their life or freedom is at risk -- is binding on all EU member states under the 1951 Refugee Convention and the European Convention on Human Rights. The UN Refugee Agency, UNHCR, currently calls on states not to forcibly return anyone to Ukraine.
The Temporary Protection Directive does not deport anyone. What removing a man from the protected category does is take away the legal framework that makes his presence in the EU unambiguous.
Since November 2025, US Immigration and Customs Enforcement has conducted at least three removal operations involving Ukrainian nationals. ICE flew the men to Polish airports. Polish officials then escorted them across the border into Ukraine.
The detentions were carried out in the United States. One man, 26, told CNN he was stopped during a traffic check and did not have his passport on his person. He was handcuffed, taken to a detention facility, and deported despite producing valid documents within hours. His parole and work permit were cancelled.
Volodymyr Dudnyk was met by Ukrainian military draft officers at the border crossing.
Anton Smovzh, on the same flight, was taken to a military training centre. He later escaped. Speaking to CNN from Kyiv: "In the medical exam, they took my blood in three minutes and said I was fit for service."
Amnesty International and Human Rights First have called on Poland to stop cooperating with these removals. Poland has not responded publicly to the request.
"I just followed orders ..."
No EU member state currently applies capital punishment. The last execution in an EU country was carried out in France in September 1977.
The Directive exists because of what happened when it did not.
In July 1938, thirty-two nations gathered at Evian-les-Bains to discuss the Jewish refugee crisis in Nazi Germany. Quotas were not increased. Australia's delegate told the conference: "We have no real racial problem and are not desirous of importing one."
In May 1939, the MS St. Louis left Hamburg carrying 937 Jewish refugees. They held valid Cuban tourist visas. Cuba had changed its immigration rules weeks earlier without informing the passengers. The ship was denied entry at Havana. It was denied entry by the United States. It was denied entry by Canada. It returned to Europe. The United Kingdom, Belgium, the Netherlands, and France each accepted a portion of the 907 passengers who disembarked at Antwerp in June 1939. Germany subsequently occupied three of those four countries. Two hundred and fifty-four of the St. Louis passengers were killed.
The "J" stamp in the passengers' German passports had not been Germany's idea. In October 1938, Switzerland's chief of federal police, Heinrich Rothmund, met with Nazi officials in Berlin. Switzerland requested that Jewish passports be marked with the letter "J" -- so that Swiss border guards could identify them and refuse entry more efficiently. The German government agreed.
The 1951 Refugee Convention was written because of what those events produced. Its Article 33 prohibits return to "the frontiers of territories where his life or freedom would be threatened on account of his race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion." The European Convention on Human Rights sets a wider bar: Article 3 prohibits returning anyone to face inhuman or degrading treatment, without exception and without a qualifying ground. It is Article 3 that UNHCR is invoking now for Ukraine.
The Commission's proposal removes automatic protection from people because their home government's law says they should not have left. The 1951 Convention was written for exactly this situation.
On 25 June 2026, the day before Commissioner Brunner's announcement, Denmark's Minister for Immigration submitted a bill removing residence permits from Ukrainian men aged 23 to 60. "It is not intended that our residence rules should be used to avoid mobilisation," he said. Sweden, Finland, Austria, and Poland had advocated for the same restriction at EU level three weeks earlier.
In October 1943, the Nazi occupation ordered the deportation of Denmark's Jews. Ordinary Danes put seven thousand people into fishing boats and smuggled them to Sweden overnight. About 477 were deported -- to Theresienstadt, not Auschwitz. Denmark kept advocating for them throughout the war. Most survived.
The Commission's proposal will be put to EU member states for approval. No timeline has been given.
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