No extra funding to meet border-crossing boom

- It will probably further alter for the worse with the start of the visa-free border traffic, says Hætta.

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A report outlining the urgent needs to meet the boom in border traffic at the Norwegian border was presented in March. In peak-hours, there is a rather chaotic situation at the border with long queues of vehicles and overcrowded passport control facilities.

The report is suggesting immediate measures such as new lanes for cars for both incoming and outgoing traffic at the border. Additional windows for passport control were suggested, but also possibilities for using portacabins at the lanes for passport control in peak-hours. Most important, the police-report made in cooperation with customs and other officials at the border underlines the need for more man-power at the border station.

All together the police and customs says the need is 12 new employees in addition to those already on duty.

The total sum of the measures suggested to be implemented immediately are 23 million NOK (€2,93 million), but despite the fact that the working group’s madate was initated by the Ministry of Justice, the same ministry ignores to follow up the suggestions in the revised budget.

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The intermediate reconstruction was supposed to start as the snow melted this spring. Today, the snow is gone and measures suggested by the working group behind the report are not started.

- It is still not decided when the construction work can start, since this must follow the regular budget process work, says Steffen S. Aagedal, press-officer with the Norwegian Ministry of Justice to BarentsObserver.

In Norway’s state budget for 2011, the government stated the importance of “developing and arrange additional simplification of border-crossing at Storskog” to meet the new visa-free travel for inhabitants in the border areas and because of the prolonged opening hours to come at the border.

Further it is stated that “equipment for simplified control of bone fide (non-problematic) travellers will be put in place in the form of gates with self-service control of travel documents.” Such eGates is also suggested in the police report suggesting intermediate measures.

But there is no money for any such measures, either in the state budget itself or in the revised state budget presented by the government last Friday.

In practice, this means that no constructing work will take place at Storskog this summer.

- What is clear, is that I can hardly see that we can finance this with the means we have, says Ellen Katrine Hætta. She says they will start a dialog with the Police Directorate to see if there are means that can be transferred to the border station improvements from other places.

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The agreement between Norway and Russia on visa-free travel for citizens in a 30 kilometres zone on each side of the border is supposed to be activated by the end of 2011, or early January 2012. The local police in charge of the border crossings estimate a further sharp increase in border-crossers in the near future.

Also Norway’s Foreign Minister Jonas Gahr Støre has several times underlined the need to improve the facilities at Storskog in order to meet the sharp increase in numbers of travellers.

- We should expect increased traffic across the border. Last year we recorded 140,000 border crossings and especially in the weekends there is long waiting time at Storskog border station. This we have to do something with, said Jonas Gahr Støre talking at a business conference in the Norwegian border town of Kirkenes in February.

Støre continued: - While awaiting the project proposal for a brand new border station, we have established a working group led by (former) chief of police (in Eastern Finnmark) Skulstad, which by March 15 shall propose immediate measures at Storskog to remedy the situation in the short term.

The question was also on the agenda when Russia’s First Deputy Prime Minister Viktor Subkov met with Norway’s Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg in Oslo in February as reported by BarentsObserver.

It is therefore a surprise that the government don’t provide any kind of funding to start the reconstruction work this summer.

The measures the police want to implement to meet the border-crossing boom are only for avoiding chaos over the next few years. In the longer run, a brand new border station is suggested built. Such totally new border station can, pending funding, earliest be ready by 2015.