EU EASTERN BORDERS: Finland completes 200km border fence ― Finnish government planning to extend ‘Pushback Law’ ― Latvian NGO accuses government of repression ― Polish parliament approves ninth extension of asylum ban ― NGO report highlights deaths and…

• Finland has completed a 200-kilometre-long fence along its border with Russia.
• The Finnish government is planning to extend its controversial border law until 2028.
• An NGO in Latvia has accused the government of withdrawing financial support because of a legal case against one its members.
• MPs in Poland have approved another extension of the country’s controversial asylum law.
• A new NGO report has highlighted the lethal impact of pushbacks along the Poland-Belarus border.

Finland has completed a 200-kilometre-long fence along its border with Russia. According to the Finnish Border Guard, the 4.5metre-high fence, technical surveillance system, road network and 25m-wide clearing – which has cost an estimated €365 million – “improves border surveillance capability and prevents and delays especially extensive and instrumentalised irregular migration”. On 7 September, Minister of the Interior Mari Rantanen told journalists that the fence was “one part of our border security and it is helping us for surveillance, but also keeping people out of Finnish territory if needed”. She also said that it may be extended in the future to cover more of the 1,340km-long border and suggested a role for the EU in funding it. “What we particularly need is EU funding for eastern member states so that projects like this can be financed,” she said.

The Finnish government is planning to extend its controversial border law until 2028. The ‘Act on Temporary Measures to Combat Instrumentalised Migration’ (informally known as Finland’s ‘Pushback Law’), which was adopted in July 2024, was intended to allow Finnish border guards to turn away people who wanted to claim asylum at the Finland-Russia border and to remove people who had already entered Finnish territory. Although it was initially presented as a temporary measure, it was previously extended for 18 months in June 2025. On 3 September, the Ministry of the Interior issued a press release in which it stated its intention to extend the law by another 24 months until December 2028. Minister of the Interior Mari Rantanen justified the latest extension on the grounds that it “helps us ensure that border authorities can act effectively in the most serious incidents of instrumentalised migration”. Commenting on the previous extension in June 2025, the Finnish Refugee Council denounced the legislation as “fundamentally contrary to EU law, the Finnish Constitution and core human rights obligations”.

An NGO in Latvia has accused the government of withdrawing financial support because of a legal case against one its members. According to a statement published by the I Want to Help Refugees (GPB) organisation on 5 September, the Ministry of Culture informed it on 30 July about the suspension of an EU-funded project. GBP has alleged that the decision was taken because one of its council members, Ieva Raubiško, was on trial for “organising intentional illegal crossing of the state border for a group of people”. The NGO argued that the decision to suspend the project before the relevant court had ruled on the case “contradicts the presumption of innocence and sets a dangerous precedent” and that “if such an approach becomes the norm, no NGO project will be safe anymore”. “Suspicion, accusation or pending legal proceedings against a representative of the organisation will be enough for the state to suspend activities carried out in the public interest and deny access to public funding,” it added.

MPs in Poland have approved another extension of the country’s controversial asylum law. On 4 September, lawmakers overwhelmingly voted in favour of extending the law which allows Poland to suspend the rights of people who enter the country via the border with Belarus irregularly to apply for asylum. It is the ninth time that parliament has voted to extend the ban which initially entered into force in March 2025. The government justified the 60-day extension on the grounds that “dangerous incidents have regularly occurred in which aggressive foreign nationals attacked Polish patrols”. According to the TVP public service broadcaster, 492 asylum applications have been rejected and 178 applications from vulnerable groups were accepted between March 2025 and August 2026.

A new NGO report has highlighted the lethal impact of pushbacks along the Poland-Belarus border. The report, which was published by the Swiss-based Border Forensics investigative agency and was based on two years of investigation, notes that 102 deaths and “many more” disappearances have been reported in the borderlands since 2021. It found inter alia that irregular border crossings have been “made into a crisis”, that the pushback regime has been enabled by “an architecture of enmity”, that the environment has been “weaponised”, that indirect violence has led to the “evasion of accountability” and that violence has become “normalised”. It concludes that “Poland and the EU’s policies further pose grave risks for their societies and polities” and that “while migrants seeking protection do not raise any serious security threat for Poland or the EU, the undermining of fundamental norms of human dignity, rule of law, and human rights does”.

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