Sun, 13 Dec, 2015 01:18:17 AM FTimes-Xinhua-STT Report, Dec 13  President Sauli Niinistö. Photo Lehtikuva. Finland kept cautious towards a planned proposal to create a border force to guard the external EU frontiers in case of emergency, fearing it may infringe its sovereignty.
According to a plan being prepared within the European Commission, the border guards could be deployed even without the approval of the member countries, media reported on Friday.
President Sauli Niinistö said late Friday that the thought of limiting a country’s power of decision seems to be “fairly far-reaching.”
Finland is one of the Schengen countries and shares a long land border with a non-EU country -- Russia.
In an interview with the national radio YLE, Niinistö said the assistance will certainly be welcome to “those who want it.”
He noted that in today’s situation all states “perhaps are not capable of the duties.”
Earlier in the day, the chairman of the Parliamentary Defence Committee, Ilkka Kanerva, who was also cautious about the proposal, said he did not believe EU countries would give up their sovereignty on border issues.
An opposition by two-thirds of the EU countries would be enough to block the plan to send border troops to a country, the Finnish national broadcaster Yle quoted sources in Brussels as saying.
An Yle analysis said such a front of opposition could hardly be ever created against the backdrop of the current refugee crisis.
Meanwhile, Interior Minister Petteri Orpo said the need for strengthening the EU’s external borders is evident, reported the news agency STT.
Primarily, each country must, in his opinion, be responsible for its own border control, and strengthening border protection must always at the very least be a promise from the countries in question.
Orpo told the morning show Yle Ykkösaamu (Morning Breakfast programme) that the existing EU border security agency, Frontex, would be a good organisation through which external border controls could be improved.
In practice, the issue would be the assurance of free movement within the Schengen countries.
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