The European Parliament has added a discussion on the situation on the Finnish-Russian border to its agenda for Tuesday evening. The debate will take place with representatives of the EU Commission and the Council of Member States, but it does not include voting on, for example, the Parliament’s resolution.
The purpose of the discussion is to direct MEPs’ attention to the situation on Finland’s eastern border. The speeches of the Parliament’s groups have been summarized for the Finnish MEPs. The discussion starts after ten in the evening Finnish time.
Eero Heinäluoman (SD) presented the topic first and considered it important because “the situation on Finland’s eastern border can get ‘really bad.'” People may be pushed across the border and lured with false promises. He urged that other EU countries and the European Parliament understand Finland’s conditions so that they are ready to support it if needed.
Petri Sarvamaa (Coalition) also considers this discussion “extremely important” for the entire EU, as there are clear indications that Russia is trying to undermine Finland’s ability to operate in its own and the Union’s longest border area. He stated that closing borders points in time sends a message to Russia that Finland will not allow a situation like recently occurred between Belarus and Poland to escalate to such a level again.
Mauri Pekkarinen (Center) says that taking care of humanitarian aid is important from his perspective, but he assumes that “serious development costs” are behind government decisions. He also noted that “the Border Guard has said out loud that the profile of asylum seekers has changed.” It can be concluded that Russia selects people who come across Finland’s eastern border, according to him.
Alviina Alametsä (Green) considers raising this issue in Europe important from her group’s perspective, but she did not raise any concerns about Finland being on wrong path in its actions. She states that her group takes care of humanitarian aid seriously and has not received official threat assessments from government yet, but she assumes “serious development costs” are behind them based on what she heard in media reports about changing asylum seekers profile at Finnish-Russian border