{"id":447477,"date":"2026-03-12T17:28:30","date_gmt":"2026-03-12T16:28:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/2026\/03\/12\/crisi-in-medio-oriente-la-commissione-ue-riporta-a-casa-altri-303-cittadini-europei\/"},"modified":"2026-03-12T17:55:17","modified_gmt":"2026-03-12T16:55:17","slug":"middle-east-crisis-the-eu-commission-brings-home-another-303-european-citizens","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/2026\/03\/12\/middle-east-crisis-the-eu-commission-brings-home-another-303-european-citizens\/","title":{"rendered":"Middle East crisis: the EU Commission brings home another 303 European citizens"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Brussels &#8211; With <strong>two more flights<\/strong>&nbsp;departing today (12 March) from Oman and Saudi Arabia for <strong>Warsaw<\/strong> (Poland), the <strong>European Commission<\/strong> has brought home <strong>303 European citizens stranded in the Middle East<\/strong> following the recent military escalation.<br \/>\n<a href=\"https:\/\/ec.europa.eu\/commission\/presscorner\/detail\/en\/mex_26_600\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">This was announced this afternoon<\/a> <\/p>\n<p>by<a href=\"https:\/\/ec.europa.eu\/commission\/presscorner\/detail\/en\/mex_26_600\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">&nbsp;<\/a><strong>Hadja Lahbib<\/strong>, Commissioner for Equality, Preparedness and Crisis Management, emphasising that the <a href=\"https:\/\/civil-protection-humanitarian-aid.ec.europa.eu\/what\/civil-protection\/emergency-response-coordination-centre-ercc_en\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">EU Emergency Response Coordination Centre (ERCC)<\/a> is &#8220;in full action to enable the Union<br \/>\nstep in to help when challenges are too great for any one country to face alone.&#8221;&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>The two aircraft were <strong>organised and paid for by the Brussels executive<\/strong> as part of the<a href=\"https:\/\/civil-protection-humanitarian-aid.ec.europa.eu\/what\/civil-protection\/resceu_en\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"> rescEU&nbsp;system<\/a>, an &#8220;enhanced&#8221; version of the EU Civil Protection Mechanism (UCPM) that allows the Commission to directly provide its own transport and cover 100 per cent of the travel costs. As with <a href=\"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/2026\/03\/09\/middle-east-two-eu-aircraft-bring-home-356-european-citizens\/\">what the Romanian government did<\/a>on Monday, 9 March, on this occasion, it was <strong>Poland<\/strong>, the country of origin of 227 passengers on the two flights, that requested the activation of rescEU.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;When the new Middle East crisis broke out, hundreds of thousands of European citizens were stranded in the region (mainly French, German, and Italian) and, as Lahbib pointed out, &#8220;thanks to more than 70 EU repatriation flights, <strong>more than 8,000 people have already returned home safely<\/strong>.&#8221; Further departures are planned in the coming days to meet the requests for assistance received in Brussels from 23 Member States.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>With the two flights taking off from Oman and Saudi Arabia and landing in Poland, the EU citizens who have been evacuated from the Middle East, thanks to Brussels&#8217; intervention, now amount to more than 8,000. The trips were organised through the rescEU civil protection system<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7899,"featured_media":446842,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"episode_type":"","audio_file":"","podmotor_file_id":"","podmotor_episode_id":"","cover_image":"","cover_image_id":"","duration":"","filesize":"","filesize_raw":"","date_recorded":"","explicit":"","block":"","jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":{"format":"standard","override":[{"template":"1","parallax":"1","fullscreen":"1","layout":"right-sidebar","sidebar":"default-sidebar","second_sidebar":"default-sidebar","sticky_sidebar":"1","share_position":"top","share_float_style":"share-monocrhome","show_featured":"1","show_post_meta":"1","show_post_author":"1","show_post_author_image":"1","show_post_date":"1","post_date_format":"default","post_date_format_custom":"Y\/m\/d","show_post_category":"1","show_post_reading_time":"0","post_reading_time_wpm":"300","post_calculate_word_method":"str_word_count","show_zoom_button":"0","zoom_button_out_step":"2","zoom_button_in_step":"3","show_post_tag":"1","show_prev_next_post":"1","show_popup_post":"1","show_comment_section":"1","number_popup_post":"1","show_author_box":"0","show_post_related":"1","show_inline_post_related":"0"}],"image_override":[{"single_post_thumbnail_size":"crop-500","single_post_gallery_size":"crop-500"}],"trending_post_position":"meta","trending_post_label":"Trending","sponsored_post_label":"Sponsored by","disable_ad":"0","subtitle":""},"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_override_counter":{"view_counter_number":"0","share_counter_number":"0","like_counter_number":"0","dislike_counter_number":"0"},"footnotes":""},"categories":[25712],"tags":[25871,28514,33350,27337,25952,29147,27872,28500],"class_list":["post-447477","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general-news","tag-protection-civil-en","tag-evacuazioni","tag-middle-east-en","tag-poland-and","tag-rimpatri-en","tag-resurrected","tag-war-en"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/447477","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7899"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=447477"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/447477\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":447478,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/447477\/revisions\/447478"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/446842"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=447477"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=447477"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=447477"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}