Asylum seekers arriving by land in Finland from Russia will now be required to lodge applications some 300km north of the Arctic Circle — at the remote Raja-Jooseppi border post.
"This is Finnish winter time," said Annu Lehtinen, executive director of the Finnish Refugee Council, speaking to EUobserver on Thursday (23 November). "I think our biggest concern was that if the whole eastern border would have been closed for asylum seekers," she said.
Finland has closed all other bord...
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Nikolaj joined EUobserver in 2012 and covers home affairs. He is originally from Denmark, but spent much of his life in France and in Belgium. He was awarded the King Baudouin Foundation grant for investigative journalism in 2010.