€40 million to border stations upgrade
Booming cross-border travel between Russia and Finland triggers rapid measures to avoid traffic jam.
Traffic across Finland’s eastern borders to Russia has increased with 25 percent over the last year, and the ten-million travel mark will be hit in the coming days, reports Helsingin Sanomat with reference to Finnish border authorities.
The queue of lorries and trucks waiting to cross the border to Russia can reach lengths of more than ten kilometres in the weekends at the south-eastern border stations. With the new upgrades, the idea is to separate better the private peoples’ traffic from commercial cargo traffic.
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The €40 million upgrade of border station infrastructure will be spent over the coming two years. €18 million comes from the European Neighbourhood and Partnership Instrument ENPI. An equivalent sum will be spent on the Russian side of the border to ease congestions, according to Helsingin Sanomat.
Read also: Cross-border trade a billion-euro business for Finland
By the end of December, Russian passport holders can use the automatic border control system at the Vaalimaa border crossing station. Such self-service portals for verifying the travellers’ identity is already in place at the airport in Helsinki. Travellers will be recognised by their fingerprints.
Earlier this year, also Norwegian border police responsible for passport control on the Storskog border station to Russia suggested introducing biometric control, but Norway’s Ministry of Justice has not granted the funding yet.
