According to Chancellor of Justice Tuomas Pöysti, there are serious legal problems with the government’s proposal for a new border law. It would allow the immediate repatriation of asylum seekers back to Russia under certain circumstances.
Prime Minister Petteri Orpo (NCP) and Interior Minister Mari Rantanen (Finns) unveiled the draft bill on 15 March and circulated it for comment from experts and relevant agencies during a brief period that ends on Monday.
The right-wing cabinet hopes to fast-track the bill’s approval in Parliament, citing the risk of a renewed influx of third-country nationals over Finland's border with Russia.
The law is aimed at combating instrumentalised migration across the border, which the government says has been orchestrated by Russian officials as a means of hybrid influence on Finland.
Law would violate international commitments
The government admits that the proposal would violate some of Finland's international commitments. Therefore it would need to be passed as an urgent "exception law". Doing so would require a two-thirds majority of votes cast, including support from a number of MPs from opposition parties.
The proposal may still be adjusted based on the round of comments before submission to the legislature. In Parliament, it must be approved by the multi-party Constitutional Law Committee, which in the past has blocked government bills on constitutional grounds.
In Pöysti’s view, the bill still needs work and clarifications. He said that it would be possible to enact the bill as an exception law, but that the constitutional exception must be more precisely defined and rationalised.
The Chancellor of Justice pointed out that the government can only present the measure as an exception law if it can prove there is a serious threat to national security or Finland's right to self-determination.
"Considerable ambiguity in this bill"
"It would be good to clarify how serious and what type of phenomenon would be sufficient to initiate procedures according to this law," he said late Friday.
According to Pöysti, the legislation should also aim to avoid violations of international human rights obligations and EU law, and in this regard the bill still needs work.
Pöysti also stressed the legal protection of those asylum seekers subject to instrumentalised immigration as well as of border authorities. According to Pöysti, efforts must be made to further limit and specify border officers’ individual discretion.
"The limited exception mentioned in the Constitution cannot mean a law that is arbitrarily enforced," he said, adding that "there is considerable ambiguity in this bill".
Rantanen: Security first
Interior Minister Rantanen promised that the government will consider feedback received from the comment round and fine-tune the bill based on these statements.
"Legal scholars naturally look at the matter from the point of view of their own expertise, and it was to be expected that there would certainly be criticism, but the government must look at the matter as a whole and from the point of view of the security of Finland and Finns," Rantanen told Yle.
Rantanen told Yle on Friday that the bill is being prepared quickly at her ministry with the aim of presenting it to Parliament as soon as possible after Easter, i.e., in early April.
Rantanen, a former police officer, was named as interior minister by the nationalist Finns Party last summer. She soon came under fire due to social media posts referring to racist conspiracy theories, which she disavowed and then deleted.
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