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What are my rights?

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When you registered with the municipal administration, you received a document entitled: Declaration of arrival. With this you are not allowed to work, you do not receive any social support and you do not have access to compulsory health insurance.

Via the temporary protection status, you can apply for an A card from your municipality after registration. Then you can work, register for the compulsory health insurance and claim social services from the OCMW/CPAS of the municipality where you reside.

PCSW aid

To receive social assistance, you must first register to obtain Temporary Protection Status. It is therefore important to go to the registration centre in Heysel and then to the municipality where you live, before going to the Public Centre for Social Welfare (PCSW) in the municipality where you live.

Persons benefiting from temporary protection can receive aid equivalent to the social integration allowance. If all the conditions required to claim this right have been met, this right to assistance equivalent to social integration allowance can be claimed as soon as the person concerned has received a certificate of temporary protection and has presented himself or herself to the municipality of his/her place of residence.  

Persons benefiting from temporary protection are eligible to become members of a mutual health insurance fund as soon as they are able to prove their residency status by means of a certificate of temporary protection, proof of registration or an Annex 15.

While waiting for the right to join a mutual health insurance fund, urgent medical assistance is provided to persons who have left Ukraine due to the war and who declare to the Public Centre for Social Welfare (PCSW) that they are claiming temporary protection status.

Labour market

As a beneficiary of the temporary protection status, you get an unlimited access to the labour market if you have the required residence permit in your possession (A card or Annex 15 issued pending the A card). The same access to the labour market is provided for certain family members of the beneficiary of temporary protection who are not themselves beneficiaries of this status but whose stay is linked to that of the beneficiary concerned.

A brochure published by the FPS Justice will provide you with the information on the procedure you have to follow to be allowed to work. You can also complete a test to check whether your rights as an employee or self-employed person are respected.