In December 2018, 63,051 individuals had received cash assistance, compared to 90,537 eligible asylum-seekers and beneficiaries of international protection (45,451 households), living across 116 locations, at the end of December 2019. 121,247 persons had received cash assistance at least once before the end of the year.
This increase was due to new arrivals, as the only pathway for official onward movement to other EU Member States remained the family reunification procedure under the Dublin Regulation. UNCHR conducted a surge enrolment exercise during the last quarter of 2019 in order to decrease the waiting time between arrival and enrolment into its cash assistance programme, which had increased as a result of the increased arrivals in autumn 2019 on the islands.
Individuals in need of international protection who had benefited from cash assistance for more than six months became ineligible for cash assistance as of April 2019, in accordance with the Ministerial Decision 6382/2019 and the relevant correspondence with the authorities regulating the disenrollment of those granted status prior to January 2019.
Nearly all households (99.5%) identified cash assistance as their primary means of meeting their basic needs and more than half (57%) reported cash assistance as their only means of meeting their basic needs.
Post-distribution monitoring data demonstrated that food was the most common expenditure category (97%), even among those in catered accommodation, with a reported average household spending of €214 per month. The second most common expenditure category was medical expenses at 34%, an increase from 25% in 2018, followed by clothing (31%). Both women and men reported common top three expenditures. As expected, disproportionate expenditure patterns were marked among households with different needs, for example 25% of respondents spent an average of €80 per month on baby products, 10% of respondents spent an average of €154 per month on rent.
2019