The Norwegian State Budget that the Stoltenberg government presented on Monday did not include funding for the new station, which has been under planning for years.
“Without a new station the quality of the border control will be worse”, Head of the Kirkenes Police Station Hans Møllebakken says to Finnmarken. The police have discussed different scenarios that can occur when many people are gathered inside the control area and whether it is possible to pass through the passport control and into Norway without being registered or controlled.
“If [traffic] every day was like Saturdays at Storskog, it could affect the quality of our control”, Møllebakken says. Traffic over the Storskog-Borisoglebsk station increases month by month following easier visa-rules and peaking cross-border shopping and tourism. In September, 26,000 border crossings were counted, up 4,000 from the same month last year. Many Russians come to Kirkenes for shopping on Saturdays.
“On the busiest days there are so many people in here that we have to do our outermost to keep control”, Møllebakken says, and adds that he had expected that funding for the new station would be ready in the state budget.
Traffic over the border has doubled over the last three years and is expected to reach at least 310,000 by year end.
In September, BarentsObserver reported that Kolarctic – the EU and Russia’s financial instrument for cross-border projects, has approved a €26 million plan to build a brand new border checkpoint at Borisoglebsk to meet the peaking traffic. Construction work on the Russian checkpoint can start next year. Both local police authorities and businesses on the Norwegian side have for years been pushing on the government for budget-grants to build a long-planned new border checkpoint at Storskog.
