Negative decision for an asylum seeker
If you get a negative decision on your application, you have the right to appeal against the decision to an administrative court.
If you do not appeal against the decision or do not submit an application for permission to remain in Finland during the appeal procedure in time, you do not have the right to reside in Finland. You must then leave the country, or the police or the Finnish Border Guard may remove you from the country.
If you wish to leave the country, you can apply for assistance for voluntary return.
Contents of this page:
- Service of decision
- Appealing a decision
- Removal from the country
- When is the decision final?
- Other residence permits
Service of decision
When a decision has been made, you will be informed of the decision either by the Finnish Immigration Service, the police or the Finnish Border Guard. The decision will be served on you in your native language or another language that you have stated you understand. If necessary, the authorities will use an interpreter when serving the decision on you.
When you receive the decision, you will also receive the following documents and client instructions:
- Appeal instructions.
- The appeal instructions specify the administrative court to which you may appeal, the appeal period, the attachments needed, and the ways you may submit your appeal to the administrative court.
- Instructions for adults who have received a negative decision or instructions for an unaccompanied child who has received a negative decision.
In some cases, you must make a separate application to the administrative court to request to be allowed to stay in Finland during the processing of your appeal. On this website, this request is referred to as the application for permission to remain on the territory of Finland.
Appealing a decision
The administrative court may either reject your appeal or overturn the decision made by the Finnish Immigration Service. If the decision is overturned, the court returns the matter to the Finnish Immigration Service for renewed consideration.
If the administrative court rejects your appeal, you can make an appeal to the Supreme Administrative Court. This is possible only if the Supreme Administrative Court grants you leave to appeal.
If you have questions about the status of your matter, contact your counsel if you have one. You can also directly contact the authorities that are processing your matter, for example the administrative court or the Supreme Administrative Court.
Decisions that cannot be appealed
When you have withdrawn your application and received a decision on its withdrawal, you cannot appeal against the decision. It is also impossible to appeal against a decision made by the Finnish Immigration Service to grant a residence permit to a foreign national admitted to Finland as a quota refugee.
Removal from the country
When a residence permit on the basis of international protection is not granted to you, the Finnish Immigration Service usually issues a decision on denial of admittance or stay in connection with the negative decision.
If you have had a valid residence permit or if your valid residence permit is withdrawn, the Finnish Immigration Service issues a deportation decision. This means that you may be removed from the country even if you have been living in Finland.
When issuing the decision, the Finnish Immigration Service usually gives you 30 days to leave Finland voluntarily. If you do not leave Finland within this time, the police or the Finnish Border Guard can remove you from the country.
Usually, there will not be time reserved for voluntary return if an entry ban is imposed on you or if your application has been processed in an accelerated procedure or rejected as inadmissible.
When will the removal from the country happen?
First, the Finnish Immigration Service makes a decision on removal from the country, which is either a decision on denial of admittance or stay, or a deportation decision. If you do not leave the country, the police or the Finnish Border Guard will enforce your removal from the country.
The day when the decision on removal from the country becomes enforceable depends on what type of decision was made on your application for international protection. When the decision is served on you, you will be told when the decision becomes enforceable and what you need to do.
If your application has been processed in the normal examination procedure, you cannot be removed from the country before the appeal period in your matter has expired. If you appeal against the decision, you cannot be removed from the country before an administrative court has made a final decision on your matter. If you apply for leave to appeal to the Supreme Administrative Court, the police can remove you from the country, unless the Supreme Administrative Court expressly orders otherwise.
In the following situations, the police or the Finnish Border Guard may remove you from the country very shortly after you have been served with a decision, unless you make a separate application to the administrative court for permission to remain in Finland during the processing of your appeal:
- Your application has been processed in an accelerated procedure.
- Your application has been processed in the border procedure.
- Your application has been considered inadmissible.
- Your application has been rejected as implicitly withdrawn.
- Your subsequent application has been rejected as unfounded or manifestly unfounded.
If you make an application to the administrative court for permission to remain in Finland during the processing of your appeal, you cannot be removed from the country before the administrative court has issued a decision on that permission application.
In the following cases, you may be removed from the country as soon as the Finnish Immigration Service has assessed the principle of non-refoulement in your case and has deemed that there is no impediment to removing you from the country:
- Your first subsequent application has been rejected as inadmissible and it was considered to have been lodged merely in order to delay or frustrate the enforcement of your removal from the country.
- The application is a second or further subsequent application.
- You have been considered a danger to public order or national security.
- A final decision has been issued on extraditing you to another country or to an international criminal court or tribunal because of a crime.
- A final decision has been issued on transferring you to another country to enforce a sentence involving deprivation of liberty.
In the cases listed above, you may make an application to the administrative court for permission to remain in Finland during the processing of your appeal. You must make the application for permission to remain on the territory of Finland within 7 days (including 5 working days) of being served with the decision.
The administrative court decides the application within 7 days (including 5 working days). The police cannot remove you from the country before the administrative court has issued a decision on your application for permission to remain on the territory of Finland.
When is the decision final?
If you do not appeal against the decision, it becomes final when the appeal period expires. Once the decision is final, the police or the Finnish Border Guard may remove you from the country. If you have applied for assistance for voluntary return, you will not be removed from the country even if the decision is already final.
Other residence permits
If you have applied for more than one residence permit simultaneously, the Finnish Immigration Service will process the applications separately.
When you receive a decision on one of your applications, the processing of your other application continues in the normal manner at the Finnish Immigration Service. The decision on one application does not stop or pause the processing of the other application.
Submitting a new residence permit application does not necessarily stop you from being removed from the country.
You cannot get a residence permit in Finland on the basis of studies, work or pursuing a trade if you are still residing in Finland and
- you have applied for international protection and you have not received a decision on your application yet or
- you have received a negative decision on your application for international protection.
Read more about an asylum seeker’s right to work and study.
Read more
Termination of reception services
Once your application for international protection has been processed, you must leave the reception centre and find somewhere else to live in.
If the police cannot remove you from the country but you could return to your home country independently, you will usually have access to reception services for a maximum of 30 days, meaning that you have 30 days to either leave Finland independently or apply for assistance for voluntary return.
In some cases, your reception services will end immediately. This may be the case if, for example, you have already been given a period of up to 30 days to use reception services in connection with your previous negative decision.
Removal from the country may not be possible if, for example:
- there are no functioning or secure transport connections to your home country
- your home country refuses to admit persons who return under police escort.
The police or the Finnish Border Guard will inform your reception centre immediately if they are not able to remove you from the country.
When your reception services end, you are no longer allowed to live at the reception centre, you are not paid reception allowance, and you do not have access to any other services provided by the reception centre, such as healthcare.
The reception services of children who have arrived in Finland without a parent or guardian will not end. In other words, an unaccompanied child may continue to live at the reception centre until he or she is removed from the country.