|Published on: 18th December 2025|Categories: News|
- The construction of fencing along Finland’s eastern border is almost complete in Lapland.
- The Hungarian government has filed a lawsuit against the Court of Justice of the EU over its ruling on the country’s asylum rules.
- The United Nations Refugee Agency has urged authorities in Lithuania to stop committing pushbacks on its eastern border.
- More than 180 people have entered Poland irregularly through a tunnel on the country’s border with Belarus.
The construction of fencing along Finland’s eastern border is almost complete in Lapland. According to Finland’s public broadcasting company (YLE), other sections of the fence will be completed by summer 2026. The broadcaster has also reported that the 4.5 metre-high fencing will only be placed along approximately 200 kilometres of the more than 1,300km long Finland-Russia border due to its high cost: approximately €362 million or €1.8m per km.
The Hungarian government has filed a lawsuit against the Court of Justice of the EU (CJEU) over its ruling on the country’s asylum rules. According to the InfoMigrants news agency, Minister for Justice Bence Tuzson, announced the lawsuit on 15 December, saying that Hungary was “not seeking to overturn the ruling, which is final, but is instead pursuing compensation for what it says were procedural failings in the case”. The lawsuit relates to the CJEU’s June 2024 decision to impose a €200m fine on Hungary for failing to comply with a 2020 judgement relating to its failure to comply with EU migration law. Tuzson is also reported to have argued that the CJEU “failed to respect procedural principles, including the right to a fair trial and the obligation to provide adequate reasoning” and that “Hungary was not informed during the proceedings that such a high penalty could be imposed, limiting its ability to respond”. He added that the court “did not sufficiently justify the scale of the fine and applied sanctions that were disproportionate when compared with penalties imposed on other EU member states in similar cases”. The lawsuit will now be examined by the General Court of the EU.
The United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR) has urged authorities in Lithuania to stop committing pushbacks on its eastern border. In an interview with the Baltic News Service (BNS), UNHCR Representative for the Nordic and Baltic Countries Annika Sandlund said that the changes to Lithuania’s asylum legislation that were introduced in 2021 “should be reviewed”. Referring to the country’s policy of turning people back at the border, Sandlund said: “We do not think that people should be used as pawns in a political chess game. But we also recognise that people who are instrumentalised are victims”. She also insisted that, even if Lithuanian authorities suspect the people who are requesting asylum of being “instrumentalised”, it still needed to assess their claims individually: “That does not mean that they are not refugees. It is a separate determination that looks at the situation in your country, not how you arrived” she said, adding: “From our point of view, that could definitely be reviewed at this stage”. According to BNS, as of 8 December, 1,600 people have been pushed back from Lithuania in 2025.
More than 180 people have entered Poland irregularly through a tunnel on the country’s border with Belarus. According to Polish Border Guard officers, 130 members of the group who made the crossing near to the village of Narewka in the Podlaskie region on 12 December were detained shortly afterwards and a search was ongoing for the others. “The hidden entrance in the forest was located approximately 50 metres [from the border fence] on the Belarusian side of the border, while the exit was located approximately 10 metres from the barrier on the Polish side,” the Polish Border Guard wrote in a statement. The Narewka tunnel was reportedly the fourth to have been discovered by officers from the Podlaskie branch of the Polish Border Guard.
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