Finland Plans to Close Border With Russia at Night to Save Money

Southeast Finland Border Guard District Commander Ismo Kurki said that checkpoints on the Russian-Finnish border could be closed at night in order to save money.

MOSCOW (Sputnik) — Finland plans to shut checkpoints on the Russian-Finnish border at night to save nearly 1 million euros ($1.1 million) annually, Southeast Finland Border Guard District Commander Ismo Kurki said Thursday.

The Finnish border patrol agency drafted plans to save 15 million euros ($16.8 million) between 2017 and 2020.

"The Border Guard made internal studies to detect effective ways of saving. One of the ways is to limit working hours of border checkpoints," Kurki said, as quoted by the Yle broadcaster.

According to the commander, no decisions will be made until the agency consults with Russian counterparts and polls regular commuters. Kurki added that border closure at night could lead to traffic jams in the daytime.

Earlier, border crossing on the Russian-Finnish border was restricted as Moscow and Helsinki reserved the right to cross Russian-Finnish land border only for Russian, Belarusian and Finnish nationals in April. The deal was aimed at curbing the flow of migrants using the Russian territory to enter Finland.