Finland's centrist Prime Minister Juha Sipila has backtracked from his plans to house asylum seekers at his country house for security reasons, a government official said Tuesday.
"The prime minister has decided that at this stage and situation no one will be placed in his residence in Kempele," the government's security chief Jari Ylitalo told AFP.
Sipila, a former businessman who has headed a center-right government since May, vowed on state television in September to host refugees at his country home in Kempele, more than 500 kilometers north of the capital Helsinki.
"I hope this becomes some kind of people's movement that will inspire many others to shoulder part of the burden in this refugee housing crisis," Sipila had said at the time.