Norway mulls migrant-deterring fence on Russia border

Norway may put a fence along part or all of the 198km border it shares with Russia, a minister says, in a move inspired by a similar project in its neighbour Finland.

"A border fence is very interesting, not only because it can act as a deterrent but also because it contains sensors and technology that allow you to detect if people are moving close to the border," Justice Minister Emilie Enger Mehl said in an interview by the Norwegian public broadcaster NRK.

She said the Norwegian government is currently looking at "several measures" to beef up security on the border with Russia in the Arctic north such as fencing, increasing the number of border staff or stepping up monitoring.

The Storskog border station, which has witnessed only a handful of illegal border crossing attempts in the past few years, is the only official crossing point into Norway from Russia.

Should the security situation in the delicate Arctic area worsen, the Norwegian government is ready to close the border on short notice, said Enger Mehl, who visited neighbouring Finland this summer to learn about how the entire 1340km Finnish-Russian land border was closed.

The Finnish government was prompted to close all crossing points from Russia to Finland in late 2023 after more than 1300 third-country migrants without proper documentation or visas - an unusually high number - entered the country in three months, just months after Finland became a member of NATO.

To prevent Russia using migrants in what the Finnish government calls a Russia's "hybrid warfare," Finlnad is building fences with a total length of up to 200km in separate sections along the border zone that makes up part of NATO's northern flank and serves as the European Union's external border.

Finnish border officials say fences equipped with top-notch surveillance equipment - to be located mostly around crossing points - are needed to better monitor and control any migrants attempting to cross over from Russia and give officials time to react.

Inspired by Finland's project, Enger Mehl said that such a fence could also be a good idea for Norway.

According to NRK, her statement was supported by police chief Ellen Katrine Hætta in Norway's northern Finnmark county.

"It's a measure that may become relevant on all or part of the border" between Norway and Russia, Enger Mehl said.

The Storskog border station is currently surrounded by a 200-metre-long and 3.5-metre-high fence erected in 2016 after about 5000 migrants and asylum-seekers had crossed over from Russia to Norway a year earlier.

Norway, a country of 5.6 million, is a NATO member but is not part of the European Union.

However, it belongs to the EU's Schengen area, whose participants have abolished border controls at their mutual borders, guaranteeing free movement of citizens.