The Lapland border crossings of Salla and Raja-Jooseppi will only serve Finnish, Russian and Belarusian citizens for the next six months or so, after the leaders of Russia and Finland agreed to a deal to stem asylum seeker traffic in the region. The new rules come into effect on Sunday, April 10 at midnight.
The block on third-country border traffic will be valid for a maximum period of 180 days.
According to a joint statement from the foreign and interior ministries, the restriction aims to “prevent illegal and uncontrolled migration and related threats, and reduce opportunities for crime. Another aim is to enhance the effectiveness of measures taken in Finland and Russia in the past few weeks to combat illegal migration and its facilitation.”
The 1,340 kilometre Finnish-Russian border marks an external periphery of the European Union's passport-free Schengen zone.
The ministries state that “Finland shares the responsibility for the management of the EU's external border, which is also the Schengen external border” and therefore must prevent the new illegal migration routes from emerging.
The Lapland Border Guard has reported that 1,757 asylum seekers crossed from Russia into Finland via the Lapland border crossings in late 2015/early 2016. The majority originated from Afghanistan and India, causing some to suspect that they weren’t actual asylum seekers and had, in fact, been living in Russia for a long time before entering Finland.
The month of March has seen no asylum seeker traffic whatsoever, as Finland and Russia have improved their bilateral cooperation on the issue.
