EU nation to pay failed asylum seekers for voluntary return home

Finland has decided to provide refugees with a financial incentive to leave “as quickly as possible,” its Interior Ministry has said

Rejected asylum seekers in Finland might receive a heavy sum from Helsinki starting next year if they agree to return to their home countries, the Finnish Interior Ministry announced on Thursday as it unveiled the new “voluntary return assistance” program.

Under the scheme, a refugee can apply for a grant for voluntary return and get €5,300 ($5,833) if they do so within 30 days after the first negative decision on their asylum application or withdraw the request themselves, the ministry’s statement said. If they do so later, the sum would drop to €2,000 ($2,201), it added.

The program, which is to be launched on January 1, 2024, is designed to encourage “leaving the country as quickly as possible and refraining from appealing the asylum decision,” the statement said. An asylum seeker can apply for the grant regardless of their country of origin.

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The money can then be spent to cover the travel costs or “commodity support,” according to the Finnish authorities. A returnee can also use the grant to “get education or start a small business” at home. “Returning to the home country must be a sustainable solution,” the statement said, adding that “return counseling” by the immigration authorities would be enhanced and measures to promote voluntary returns would be “intensified.”

Victims of human trafficking who have no place of residence in Finland, as well as those who received such a residency permit because they had been prevented from leaving the country can also apply for a grant but the sum for them would be only €3,000 ($3,301) and would not scale, depending on the timing, the Interior Ministry said.

Support would not be provided to those seeking to move to another EU or Schengen country or to a nation where citizens can enter Finland without visas, the ministry added.

The announcement comes as Finland struggles to stem the inflow of migrants and asylum seekers on its eastern border with Russia. The Nordic nation had to gradually shut down its border crossings with Russia last month, citing an increase in the number of migrants from third nations seeking to cross into its territory from Russia.

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Helsinki also repeatedly accused Moscow of being behind the influx, although the Kremlin rejected the claims as “completely baseless.” Interior Minister Mari Rantanen claimed in December that the surge in new arrivals was a “hybrid operation” aimed at “destabilizing our society,” which Helsinki must resist.

Poland, which also shares a border with Russia, said it had offered to deploy a team of “military advisers” to the Nordic nation to provide “on-site knowledge on border security, including in an operational sense.” Finland later denied any knowledge of Warsaw’s offer, while the Kremlin condemned it as an “an absolutely unprovoked, unjustified concentration of military units on the Russian border.”

In December, the Council of Europe criticized Helsinki’s decision to close the border, pointing to concerns about effective access to legal entry for asylum seekers and “considerable risks for the health and life” of migrants. Later the same month, the Finnish authorities announced opening two of the eight border crossings with Russia but shut them down in just a day. “Illegal entry on the Finnish border has immediately resumed,” Rantanen said at that time.