HELSINKI (AP) — Finnish lawmakers on Friday narrowly approved a controversial bill that will allow border guards to turn away third-country migrants attempting to enter from neighboring Russia and reject their asylum applications because Helsinki says Moscow is orchestrating an influx of migrants to the border.
The government’s bill, meant to introduce temporary measures to curb migrants from entering the Nordic nation, is a response to what Finland sees as “hybrid warfare” by Russia. It believes Moscow is funneling undocumented migrants to the two countries’ border.
The temporary law, valid for one year, was approved by 167 lawmakers — the minimum needed for it to pass in the 200-seat Eduskunta, or Parliament. Lawmakers of the Left Alliance and the Green League were among the 31 who voted against the bill.
Citing national security, Prime Minister Petteri Orpo’s center-right government says the law is needed to tackle Russia’s maneuvers of deliberately ushering migrants to the normally heavily guarded Russia-Finland border zone that is also the European Union’s external border to the north.
Opponents, including several academics, legal experts and human rights groups, say it clashes with the Constitution of Finland, international rights commitments set by the United Nations and pledges by the EU and international treaties signed by Finland.
Finland closed the 1,340-kilometer (830-mile) land border with Russia last year after more than 1,300 migrants without proper documentation or visas — an unusually high number — entered the country in three months, just months after the nation became a member of NATO.
Most of the migrants that arrived in 2023 and early this year hail from the Middle East and Africa, including from Afghanistan, Egypt, Iraq, Somalia, Syria and Yemen.
Under the new law, pending approval from President Alexander Stubb, Finnish border guards can — under certain circumstances — reject migrant asylum applications at the crossing points. They will not, however, refuse entry to children, disabled people and any migrants deemed by border guards to be in a particularly vulnerable position.
Pushbacks — the forcible return of people across an international border without an assessment of their rights to apply for asylum or other protection — violate both international and EU law. However, EU members Poland, Latvia and Lithuania have previously resorted to the controversial measure when dealing with migrants attempting to enter from Belarus.
Latvia, Lithuania and Poland have all introduced laws similar to the one proposed in Finland.
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The Associated Press