Finns Go Wild over Cheap Swedish Petrol
The Swedish government has given the people a hefty petrol subsidy in an election year. Finns have rushed to fill up in their western neighbor. However, they are not allowed to bring in as much petrol as they want from Sweden.
Sweden has used exceptional measures to drastically cut fuel prices, as a result of which the difference in petrol prices between Finland and its western neighbor has widened considerably.
In Sweden, fuel taxation has been eased with temporary decisions.
The latest price reduction came into effect at the beginning of July, when the pump price of petrol in Sweden was reduced by around 3 kronor per liter. Measured in euros, the price fell by just under thirty cents.
Previous tax cuts on petrol and diesel were made both at the beginning of January and since the beginning of May.
Fuel Prices Lowered Ahead of the Parliamentary Elections
There will be parliamentary elections in Sweden in September, and the country’s government’s energy measures can also be seen as wooing voters, although the reason for this was the increase in energy prices caused by the war in Iran.
According to monitoring by the Globalpetrolprices website, the average price of 95-octane petrol in Finland was 2.15 euros per liter based on data updated on 6 July.
According to data collected from Sweden at the same time, the price of the same quality of petrol in our western neighbor was around 1.3 euros when converted to euros.
Finns Queue Up
The huge difference in petrol prices has led Finns to fill up in droves in Sweden.
However, you are not allowed to bring as much petrol into your home country as you like from Sweden.
You can fill up your own car’s tank in your western neighbor, but you can only bring a maximum of 10 liters of petrol per vehicle into Finland in a tank or canister.
Fuel must be brought into Finland by car or motorbike, and the fuel must be the same as that normally used in the vehicle.
Jukka Riekki, the Customs Manager for Northern Control at Customs, tells MTV News that July is the busiest time of year at the Tornio border crossing, and petrol tankers add to the already considerable traffic.
The huge volume of traffic makes Customs’ control work more challenging.
“The Torniojoki bridge has been under renovation for three days and traffic is otherwise chaotic. It is clear that there will be enough petrol tankers to queue up on the Swedish side,” Riekki says.
“We have not increased the control any more than usual due to fueling. Fuel is one of the subjects we monitor in addition to our normal work.”
So far, Customs has not caught any so-called over-incursions, where fuel has been imported in large quantities from Sweden in violation of the rules.
If more fuel is imported from Sweden than the rules allow, Customs will notify the taxman, who will collect tax on the excess fuel.
“The huge amount of traffic in a way prevents the import of large quantities. If there are dozens of cars in a refueling queue, a kind of “citizen pressure” has the effect of forcing the queue to move forward,” Riekki illustrates.
Approximately 18,000 vehicles cross the border in Tornio per day. The figure includes both crossings in the direction of Sweden and Finland. The figure is from last year.
In traffic between Tornio and Haparanda, the most significant criminal cases for Customs are the smuggling of snuff and drugs across the border.
Source: MTV Uutiset (in Finnish)