Tusk on “suspension of asylum applications” in Finland. What does it look like?

Prime Minister Donald Tusk devoted a large part of his speech at the Warsaw convention of the Civic Coalition on October 12, 2024, to the topic of migration. He said that “Poland is to be safe, Poles are to feel free, safe and free in their country”, and all the government's ideas on this issue are to be included in the migration strategy. One of its elements – announced by Tusk at the convention – will be “temporary, territorial suspension of the right to asylum” He added that “he will demand recognition in Europe for this decision, because we know well how it is used by Lukashenko, Putin, by smugglers, people smugglers, people traffickers; how this right to asylum is being used, exactly contrary to the essence of the right to asylum.

After a wave of comments, also the negative onescaused by the announcement of limiting the right to asylum, Donald Tusk posted on the website X the day after the convention – October 13 entry starting with the words: “A temporary suspension of asylum applications was introduced in Finland in May.” Then he added: “It is a response to the hybrid war declared on the entire EU (including, above all, Poland) by the regimes in Moscow and Minsk, consisting in organizing mass transfers of people across our borders.”

More details about the Finnish solution referred to by the Prime Minister, presented in a comment to this entry, Deputy Minister of National Defense Cezary Tomczyk. The KO politician wrote, among other things, that in Finland “the decision to suspend the submission of asylum applications was announced as an emergency measure, and “migrants were usually directed to safe zones outside Finland or to detention centers where their status was verified.”

So, we explain what exactly was included in the Finnish law and why it was given the status of an “exceptional law”.

The regulations described by Tusk and Tomczyk were introduced in Finland act on temporary measures to combat instrumentalized migration, also known as the Return Act. Contrary to what the Prime Minister wrote, it has not been operational since May 2024, because then the Eduskanta – the Finnish Parliament – only received a draft bill, which was then discussed in committees and at the plenary session. However, from November 2023, all border crossings between Finland and Russia remain closed.

Ultimately, the Finnish Parliament adopted the bill July 12, 2024. It was adopted in a special procedure as the so-called an emergency law, which means that due to “important reasons” it may introduce solutions contrary to the Finnish constitution. The adoption of such an act requires a majority of as much as five-sixths, which means 167 votes in the 200-person Eduskanta. The government managed to gain thanks to the support of part of the opposition.

Act came into force July 22, 2024. From that date, for one year, the Finnish government, in consultation with the president, may introduce temporary restrictions on the acceptance of asylum applications on a specific part of Finland's border. Although the act clearly refers to Russia's instrumentalization of migration, it does not clearly indicate which part of the border would be subject to exclusions. This is because the territorial scope of such an exclusion will be determined each time by the government in its decisions. He may make such decisions for a maximum of one month, provided that restrictions can be introduced any number of times during the validity of the Act, i.e. until July 2025.

If the government decides to impose restrictions, border guards on the indicated part of the border will have to determine which migrants are a “tool of influence” of a foreign country on Finland and will not accept asylum applications from them if they ask for it. Therefore, migrants will not be able to enter Finland this way and, for example, wait for their application to be considered there.

Only children, people with disabilities and people whose border guards have no doubt that they are in real danger are excluded from these rules, e.g. they will be subjected to the death penalty or torture “primarily in the country from which they came to Finland”, i.e. implicitly in Russia.

The law also states that people who have already arrived in Finland as “tools of influence” of a foreign state will be “immediately expelled from the country and sent to a place where applications for international protection are accepted.” An immigrant cannot appeal either against the decision not to accept an asylum application or against the decision to expel him from the country.

The creators of the Finnish act included several reservations in the justification for it. Firstly, “the regulation does not mean that Finland will completely stop accepting applications for international protection.” Border guards will continue to receive and process them at border crossings not covered by government decisions. However, decisions on restrictions will only be issued if a foreign country tries to influence Finland by exploiting migrants, this influence will threaten national security, and other measures will be insufficient. The restrictions are intended to last “as long as necessary to prevent a serious threat” and can be lifted at any time.

After passing the bill, Finland's Interior Minister Mari Rantanen expressed hope that “this law will never have to be applied, but that it will act preventively.” At the end of September this year. local ombudsman turned to the Finnish authorities with an appeal not to use the provisions of the Act on U-turns. At the same time, we have not found any media information that the Act has ever been applied by the Finnish government from July 2024. We sent a question about this matter to the Finnish Ministry of Interior, but by the time of publication of the article we had not received a response.