Three more third-country nationals who fled Ukraine have been granted temporary reprieve in their fight to be allowed to stay in the Netherlands.

Asylum judges in Roermond ruled that the trio were entitled to the same rights as other refugees who left in the wake of the full-scale Russian invasion in February 2022.

A spokesman for deputy asylum minister Eric van der Burg said he would appeal against the decision, which conflicts with a ruling by the Council of State in February that backed the government’s decision to end protection for third-country nationals.

Van der Burg withdrew the right of non-Ukranian citizens, many of them students from Asian and African nations, to claim protection under the exceptional rules that allowed them to live and work in the Netherlands without a visa or work permit.

Around 2,750 people have been ordered to leave the country by April 2 or apply for asylum, in which case they must move out of their accommodation and report to the refugee housing organisation COA.

Last week the district court in Haarlem said three men from Pakistan, India and Ghana could continue living and working in the Netherlands until their appeals have been settled. The appeal court is due to rule on their cases on March 27.

Lawyer Thomas van Houwelingen said dozens of similar cases had been raised by third-country nationals who are challenging the government’s decision to remove them.

The Council of State ruled in January that Van der Burg was not authorised to change the eligibility rules unilaterally, but also said that the government could end the protection of refugees who had did not have permission to live in Ukraine permanently when the war broke out.

The court in Roermond said in a statement that it accepted that “the consequences of this ruling may be interpreted as undesirable by the deputy minister and by third parties”.

But it added that “if the legal consequences of political choices have not been given sufficient recognition, it does not follow that the court should ignore those consequences.”