Finland's Ovi

By Terhi Kinnunen

Next time you complain about waiting in a queue, spare a thought for Pavel.

He has parked his truck in a line stretching for 5 km (3 miles) — and this is a good day at the Finnish-Russian border.

Russia’s economy is booming and its hunger for new cars, televisions and machinery means the transit routes through Finland, Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia are clogged with trucks.

Because of this surging trans-border traffic, Finland is now as large a trading partner for Russia as the United States, but customs posts on the border are struggling to cope.

Pavel makes a return trip to Finland once a week: this time it was with a truck full of electronic equipment for Moscow.

Two weeks ago he spent 48 hours waiting to get back home. Last winter the queues stretched for more than 60 km.

While the vehicles are stuck at the border, retailers in Russia and the transport firms are losing money and local people are scared to drive on the roads with one lane blocked by trucks.

The Finns blame the Russians for the queues which are also a problem in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. “Last year we had queues on 300 days,” said Mika Poutiainen, head of Finnish customs at Vaalimaa, 186 km east of Helsinki.

Vaalimaa is Finland’s busiest border crossing to Russia, dealing with 700-800 trucks a day. Poutiainen says Finnish customs could double the amount of trucks that pass through because processing export papers takes only a couple of minutes.

“But because of the different kinds of procedures … the limit is set by the Russian side,” he said.

Russians prefer to import goods through Finland because Russian harbors near St Petersburg do not have enough unloading equipment or warehouses, and to minimize theft.

CROSSING POINTS

The amount of goods imported through Finland has doubled since 2002 to about 3 million tonnes in 2006 and Russia’s transport ministry admits its officials cannot handle the growing number of vehicles.

“Crossing points cannot manage as they are not big enough,” a ministry spokeswoman said. Finland’s transport minister says Russia could do more.

“They have promised to cut the number of officials (at the border) from seven to two. And they should also increase the number of staff,” Anu Vehvilainen said.

Russia’s relations with some of its nearest neighbors, especially from the former Soviet Union, have deteriorated lately amid mutual recriminations. Russia cut oil supplies and rail links to Estonia in a row over the relocation of a Soviet war memorial in the capital Talinn.

Finnish President Tarja Halonen, who met Russia’s Vladimir Putin at the end of September, said Russia had made decisions that would help improve border traffic but had not carried them out fully.

Earlier this month the prime ministers of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania called for Brussels to raise the problems at border crossings at the next EU-Russia Summit.

Latvia has queues of between 700 and 1,000 trucks regularly waiting at the two main crossing points to Russia, and processing takes between 60 and 72 hours. Last month trucks stood in a queue for more than a week in Estonia.

The situation in Latvia got so bad that in April a local region declared a state of emergency to draw central government’s attention to its infrastructure needs.

FUMES AND TRASH

People living near the border crossings are fed up with the exhaust fumes, feces and trash. “There are always bottles and cans,” said Tuomo Nurkka, who lives near the Nuijamaa border crossing in Lappeenranta, 247 km northeast of Helsinki.

“Trucks are standing in one lane and other traffic is using the other lane. It makes life interesting. It is dangerous especially in winter time and when the roads are icy.”

Poutiainen said electronic customs declaration would put an end to the queues.

“We don’t have the electronic declaration because the agreement would have to be made between the European Union and Russia, not between Finland and Russia. On the EU level we are still in talks to solve this problem.”

The Finnish government has raised the issue in the EU, minister Vehvilainen said.

However, it does not expect the problem to be solved anytime soon and has put aside 24 million euros ($34 million) to build a new waiting area for the trucks.
Source: Reuters
(Additional reporting by Sakari Suoninen and Tarmo Virki in Helsinki, Patrick Lannin in Riga)

(HS) The condition of lorries arriving in Finland across the country’s eastern has improved significantly. According to Finnish police, the quality of vehicles used by foreign haulage companies is getting to be close to that of Finnish trucks.

Finland’s Traffic Police have been closely scrutinising the condition of heavy goods vehicles in the southeast of Finland this week. According to police superintendent Jouni Ryhänen, the director of the campaign, the foreign vehicles are no longer in any worse shape than those owned and driven by Finns.

“Competition works. In some cases, the vehicles are even better than what the Finns have”, Ryhänen says.

Most of the foreign trucks are Russian.
During the crackdown, the police plan to inspect thoroughly more than 100 domestic and foreign lorry-trailer combinations. On the first day, 64 vehicles were inspected, and 36 drivers were given fines or warnings.

Jari Strengell of the traffic police in the Kymeenlaakso region says that in spite of the high proportion of vehicles with shortcomings, there is no reason for other motorists to worry too much. He said that a great many of the problems involved minor issues such as faulty lights, which do not necessarily have immediate serious implications for traffic safety.

During the week only one vehicle was not allowed to continue on its way: the brakes of the trailer on a Finnish lorry did not work at all, and the vehicle was left on the side of the road.
On Thursday, inspections focused on the Port of Hamina, where the violations that were found were mostly minor.

There were exceptions, however: One Russian driver en route from the harbour to the Russian border had failed to secure his load of 900 kg. paper rolls in the trailer. If the lorry had been stopped on the road, the police would have confiscated the driver’s licence without further ado.

“If something like that were on the road, it would be considered serious negligence”, Jouni Ryhänen says.

There have been news reports recently of drink driving by Russian drivers. Six drivers have been stopped for driving under the influence within a few weeks.

Strengell says that Russian traffic discipline is not particularly lax: considering the vast growth in truck of traffic, these kinds of cases are quite rare.

“Most of them are all right - no different from the Finns. But there are always these bad apples that cause everyone problems”, he says.