The Finnish government has submitted an urgent legislative proposal to parliament that would grant it sweeping new powers to restrict asylum applications and border crossings in the event of a large-scale attempt by Russia to “instrumentalize” migration as a form of hybrid warfare.
The proposed Border Security Act, announced on May 21st, comes as Helsinki accuses Moscow of intentionally facilitating migrant flows toward Finland’s eastern border in an effort to exert political pressure and destabilize the newly-acceded NATO member state.
If passed, the act would allow the government, in cooperation with the president, to temporarily block asylum seekers from entering limited areas along Finland’s 833-mile border with Russia under “highly exceptional and pressing” circumstances posing a serious threat to national sovereignty.
Apart from limited exceptions, migrants attempting to enter the designated restricted zone would be prevented from applying for asylum in Finland and subject to immediate deportation back across the border.
While controversial, Prime Minister Sanna Marin and top officials deem such stringent border control measures an unfortunate necessity to combat the increasingly brazen “weaponization of migration” being employed by the Kremlin since Finland’s accession to the Western military alliance.
“Finland must be prepared for the possibility that Russia will continue to exert pressure for a long time and in more serious and larger-scale ways,” a government statement bluntly declared, citing the length of Finland’s eastern border as an acute vulnerability.
“The aim is to improve border security and ensure that Finland has effective means at its disposal to combat instrumentalized migration that is being used to pressure Finland.”
Under the act, the threshold for imposing border restrictions would be high, requiring evidence or reasonable suspicion that a foreign power was intentionally facilitating irregular migration explicitly to “influence Finland in a way that poses a serious threat to Finland’s sovereignty and national security.”
Any decision to activate the emergency powers would be limited to one-month intervals, require approval from Finland’s president, and could still potentially allow regular passenger traffic to continue at designated crossing points.
While an extreme measure, the Marin administration insisted the proposed act represents a “limited derogation” from Finland’s constitution that would only be deployed under the gravest of circumstances where existing laws prove insufficient to contend with an orchestrated migration crisis.
“Other possible means to combat the threat of instrumentalized migration have been carefully assessed…based on the assessment, other means would not be effective,” the government stated, arguing any temporary restrictions would aim to target the Kremlin’s broader hybrid campaign rather than cut off legitimate asylum processes entirely.
Nevertheless, the act is all but certain to spark outcry from human rights advocates alarmed by any curtailing of access to asylum. Finland insisted any migrants already present within the country and not covered by the border restrictions would continue to have their claims processed.
The proposal comes after Finland joined its Nordic neighbor Sweden in closing the European Union’s longest land border crossings with Russia last autumn amid a surge in arrivals that officials openly accused Moscow of orchestrating.
While migrant flows have significantly subsided in recent months, sporadic spikes have continued, keeping tensions high along the remote frontier separating the neighboring states.
Behind the escalating tensions lie long-standing allegations that Russia’s hybrid threats include policies of intentionally overwhelming European border agencies with a flood of asylum seekers explicitly aimed at destabilizing the political and economic security of EU and NATO states.
Belarus was widely accused of weaponizing migrants as a “human battering ram” against Poland, Lithuania and Latvia in a massive 2021 border crisis viewed as Russian retaliation for those nations’ close ties with the West.
Now, with Finland solidly in the NATO camp amid another alleged Russian migration operation, Helsinki appears determined to head off a repeat of such scenes along its eastern frontier even at the risk of fierce backlash from rights groups.
While Finland insists it remains committed to meeting its international humanitarian obligations, the Marin government argues modern hybrid warfare tactics demand a degree of national emergency flexibility to defend against explicitly political uses of migration flows.
“The objective of instrumentalized migration is to influence the security and social stability of Finland and the EU,” the government stated bluntly. “This is why Finland’s goal is to find EU-level solutions to combat instrumentalized migration.”