12.11.2024 Stephen Phillips
This text builds on ‘International law and access to asylum at Finland’s eastern border’ – Mobile Futures Policy Brief 1/2014. The text is co-published on the Tålking Rights a blog powered by the Insitute for Human Rights at ÅA.
Finland’s recent response to migrants arriving at its eastern border is neither surprising nor unprecedented. There is nothing exceptional about states mobilising significant resources to prevent access to territory and asylum by unwanted migrants – examples from other European states and beyond are plentiful. Rather, in its restrictive and punitive response to unwanted migrants, Finland is one of many in a very long line of states who prioritise heavily securitised responses to migration over the fundamental rights of those seeking protection.
Following an increase in asylum seeker arrivals at its eastern border with Russia in late 2023, Finland’s right-wing government acted swiftly to limit access to asylum along the eastern frontier. The government, driven by the centre-right Kokoomus (National Coalition Party) and right-wing nationalist Perussuomalaiset (The Finns) parties, citing national security concerns, linked the increase in asylum seekers to deliberate actions by “foreign authorities” aimed at using migrants to create instability at the Finnish border.
The Petteri Orpo-led government closed border crossing points and prepared legislation that would allow for accelerated asylum procedures at the border and restrict applications for asylum under exceptional circumstances. This legislation is now in force but has not yet been used in practice, as the required exceptional circumstance have not occurred. Construction of the eastern border fence initiated under the previous government continues, and Frontex, the European Border and Coast Guard Agency, has deployed equipment and personnel “to bolster Finland’s border control activities”. Finland, typically not mentioned in conversations about control of EU external borders, has made international news for its hard line on borders and asylum. These changes to access to territory and to the conduct of asylum procedures create an increased risk of denial of access to asylum procedures and summary rejection of asylum applications, heightening the risk of returning asylum seekers to harm.
This response is not uniquely attributable to the current right-wing government, indeed some of the key elements were already put in place by the preceding centre-left coalition, led by Sanna Marin’s Social Democratic Party (SDP). Under Marin’s government Finland announced construction of a border fence along parts of the Finland-Russia frontier, estimated to take three to four years and cost 380 million euros for the materials, construction costs, roads and surveillance systems. The Finnish Border Guard justifies the necessity of the fence for situations “in which instrumentalised or otherwise widespread illegal migration would take place at the border”, and to reduce Finnish dependence on Russian border control. Marin’s government also introduced amendments to the Border Guard Act that paved the way for the subsequent actions of the Orpo government. The SDP continues to support the government’s border regime, with all party MPs ultimately voting in favour of the recently passed ‘deportation law’. Six SDP MPs who wished to vote against the new law were not given permission to do so by the party.
Consequently, Finland’s shift towards border securitisation is not an entirely recent phenomenon characterised by right-wing actors, but a gradual and deliberate turn observable across at least two governments and not exclusively connected to a short-term spike in asylum seeker arrivals. The calculated and conditional nature of the change is evident in Marin’s government only deciding to proceed with the border fence after the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine. Her government had previously decided against the necessity of such a fence when questions were raised in the context of mass migration influenced by the Belarussian state on the Poland-Belarus border in 2021.
Finland’s more recent shift to the right on border securitisation is in line with comparable policies in the other Nordic countries, which in turn sit alongside policies of other European states over the past decade and emulate the approaches of two of the pioneering countries in repulsion of unwanted migrants, the United States and Australia. The United States began systematically intercepting and returning Haitian asylum seekers in the Caribbean in the 1980s, including detention and processing at a facility at the now infamous Guantanamo Bay. ,Two decades later Australia, drawing on the US example, developed a similar system of interception and offshore detention on Nauru and Manus Island (Papua New Guinea) as a part of its so-called ‘Pacific Solution’. Both regimes have been widely condemned for their calculated cruelty and failure to respect fundamental rights. Twenty years later again, Denmark legislated for its own offshore processing solution in 2021, based heavily in extensive studies of other foreign models. Most recently, the United Kingdom has tried – so far unsuccessfully – to transfer large numbers of unwanted asylum seekers to Rwanda.
Rhetoric in Finland and other parts of Europe eerily echoes rhetoric used by the Americans and Australians, often centred on the role of cynical people smugglers and calls to stop boats and close borders. The lack of safe pathways to asylum is typically not presented as a contributing factor to the decision to undertake such dangerous journeys to begin with. The overwhelming message, parroted recently by European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen, is almost identical to that of Australian prime minister John Howard in 2001: “We will decide who comes to this country and the circumstances in which they come.”
There is nothing new about what Finland is doing, it is not exceptional, and it is more than likely not temporary – experience from elsewhere shows that once securitised border regimes are established and normalised, they can only be dismantled at great political risk. Finland has made a choice, based on its political and strategic interests, to pursue policies that reduce access to asylum and push people towards more dangerous routes as they attempt to seek safety.Recent developments in Poland, where the Tusk government has proposed the suspension of the right to seek asylum, create an environment in which the institution of asylum faces an existential threat. The truly ‘exceptional’ course of action for Finland in the present global and regional contexts would be for it to show that it is possible to be aware of and responsive to risks to national security whilst simultaneously guaranteeing the safety and security of those needing its protection. This global leadership is not beyond Finland, but it would require a level of conviction and courage that is presently absent in the political mainstream.
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