Easter Update: Election blame game, overcrowded Lapland, and Kärijää's revenge

Hello Insiders!

Wherever you’re reading this week’s Finland Insider newsletter I hope you’re having a relaxed and peaceful Easter weekend.

I don’t mind admitting it was yet another busy week for news in Finland and I needed the rest this weekend - especially with so much data to crunch after the municipal elections and regional healthcare board elections last Sunday.

So I’ve got a round-up of everything you need to know from the voting, a one-stop-shop for the highlights and lowlights. Also in this week’s newsletter churches use their Easter message to criticise government cuts, an ice breaker update, a smart ring contract cancelled, more Yle cuts, immigration, taxes, and criticism of Santa in the international media.

All that still to come but first this:

Election Roundup

Last weekend’s election results had some obvious winners and some obvious losers.

🟢 If you look at a map of Finland showing which parties control municipal councils, it looks predominantly dark green - the colour of the Centre Party. But that’s because they control so many small municipalities in relatively sparsely populated rural areas, which make up the majority of local councils. Keskusta fares much worse when it comes to cities and larger urban areas. So those dark green maps are a bit misleading.

🔴 Nationally, it was an excellent night for the Social Democrats, who significantly increased their vote share to become the leading party in terms of percentage of votes. In Helsinki they captured 8 more seats on the council.

🔵 The National Coalition Party notched up a win in the capital, and just managed to hang on to be the biggest party in Helsinki (and install their candidate Daniel Sazonov as Mayor of Helsinki, despite the Demarit candidate Evaliina Heinaluoma getting more individual votes).

🏙️ Helsinki. In Helsinki - the biggest and arguably the most important election precinct - they’ve already divvied up the senior jobs but won’t actually vote named individuals into the roles until 2 June. This includes the mayor, even though it’s already decided who that will be. The other important portfolios go to:

• Deputy Mayor for the Urban Environment: Social Democrats.

• Deputy Mayor for Education and Training: Greens.

• Deputy Mayor for Culture and Leisure: Left Alliance.

• Deputy Mayor for Social Affairs, Health and Rescue Services: National Coalition Party.

✏️ ICYMI: Here’s my pre-election interview with Daniel Sazonov (NCP), the new Mayor of Helsinki. He’ll be the third Kokoomus mayor in a row in the Finnish capital, since this style of election was introduced in 2017.

🟡 The biggest losers were the Finns Party. Any way you look at it. Their share of the vote fell by half. They lost scores of seats across the country. The ten candidates with the biggest losses in vote share compared to the last municipal election were all Finns Party candidates, analysis shows. These include party stalwarts Jussi Halla-aho and MP Jani Mäkelä. (Fun fact: The Finns Party did not even get the same total number of votes in these municipal elections as Halla-aho got by himself in the last municipal election!)

🤯 Very oddly, Finns Party MEP Sebastian Tynkkynen manages to blame the fact that foreigners were allowed to vote in this election (that’s totally normal, as the right to vote in municipal elections is based on residence rather than nationality) for a slump in his party’s vote. And in an online rant, he also somehow managed to specifically blame Somalis for voting and undermining the Finns Party, and says he’s so popular that he should have run himself, presumably to single-handedly turn the party’s fortunes around? Delusional.

🗳️ The other loser on election day was the process itself: there were more than 120,000 spoiled or invalid ballots. That’s a huge number and the Ministry of Justice is going to carry out an investigation to try and figure out what went wrong.

In the municipal elections, 39,188 votes were rejected (1.6% of all votes cast); while in the regional healthcare board elections, 81,996 votes were rejected (4% of all votes cast).

Heikki Vestman (NCP) is the chairman of parliament’s Constitutional Committee and he said this week that “there are so many rejected votes that it could have affected the election result. Mikkel Näkkäläjärvi the Social Democrats Party Chairman said “Rejected votes should not be attributed to citizens' incompetence, but it is the responsibility of election organisers to ensure that the voting process is made easy and clear enough to avoid errors. Voters must also be clearly informed that if an error occurs, they have the right to request a new ballot.”

🚺 Equality: A record number of women were elected as councillors in the municipal elections. The share of women among elected councillors is 44.9% which is an increase of 4.7 percentage points compared to the 2021 municipal elections.

📊 Some fancy calculations from the folks at Helsingin Sanomat translated the municipal election results into general election results - just for fun - to see what it might look like nationally in terms of level of support. They found that the Social Democrats and National Coalition Party would both have around 50 seats in parliament, with the Centre Party on 40 seats (they would be very happy with a result like that!) Meanwhile the Finns Party would have just 10 seats in parliament, the same as a small party like the Swedish People’s Party has at the moment. Reminder / Warning: The next election is not until spring 2027, and two years is a long time in politics! 

Inside track: Ukraine, Russia and Donald Trump

🇺🇦 A young Finnish volunteer fighting in Ukraine has been killed in action. Turun Sanomat reports on Sunday that the 20-year-old died in Eastern Ukraine. According to the newspaper, he only left for Ukraine a few months ago. The Foreign Ministry estimates that around 100 Finns have volunteered to fight in Ukraine against Russia, and around a dozen have been killed, or are missing in action.

💍 Tech. The US Government has cancelled a €87m order with Finnish smart ring manufacturer Oura. The Department of Defence placed the order in October 2024 and at the time said the rings and a wellbeing platform would be used to monitor the health and stress levels of US military staff. But now the Trump Administration says the rings are “no longer required” and “no longer considered a priority” as Donald Trump and Elon Musk look to cut government spending.

🛳️ Ice, ice, baby. A shipyard in Rauma is in negotiations with the US to build several new icebreakers. Helsingin Sanomat first reported on Friday that Rauma Marine Construction is in the running to build up to five medium-sized icebreakers, with a value of around €2.5 billion. These would be delivered within three years of the contract being signed. And Hesari says there could be three more, larger, icebreaker orders coming Finland’s way.

President Stubb was recently in Florida meeting with US President Donald Trump, while Foreign Minister Elina Valtonen (NCP) was in America last week meeting with her opposite number Marco Rubio.

🛃 Border. Finland said on Wednesday it had decided to keep its eastern border against neighbouring Russia closed until further notice. Finland shut its land borders with Russia in late 2023 amid a growing number of arrivals from countries including Syria and Somalia. It has accused Moscow of weaponising migration against the Nordic nation in retaliation for joining the NATO military alliance, an assertion the Kremlin denies.

🇷🇺 Russia. Finnish MP Pia Kauma (NCP) made waves last week after it was revealed that she took it upon herself to talk with a senior Russian politician at an Inter-Parliamentary Union event in Kazakhstan earlier this month. Kauma attended in her capacity as President of the Parliamentary Assembly of the OSCE, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe.

Now Hufvudstadsbladet reports that an OSCE adviser who travelled with Kauma as part of the official delegation once worked as an interpreter for Vladimir Putin himself. Ouch. That just adds insult to injury on this story - Kauma has already been criticised by the PM and others over her actions to “go rogue” and talk with a Russian politician. Using ‘Putin’s translator’ is just an extra layer of bad publicity. Kauma says the Russian adviser was not involved in any negotiations.

Inside the headlines

✝️ Easter. The spiritual leaders of Finland’s two biggest churches have used their joint Easter message to criticise the government’s funding cuts. Archbishop Tapio Luoma from the Evangelical Lutheran Church, and Archbishop Elia of the Orthodox Church highlighted in particular their concerns over increasing child poverty.  

“Poverty makes it difficult to be a parent and to make choices that promote children's well-being. The increase in hopelessness is also reflected in the deterioration of young people's mental health.”

It’s a strong text from the Archbishops, and I recommend you take a few moments to read what they have to say if you get the chance.

☢️ Secrets. Nearly 30 boxes of sensitive documents related to nuclear power plant construction were allegedly found on their way to Russia earlier this week.

✂️ Cuts. Finnish public broadcaster Yle has started a new round of negotiations to cut up to 37 jobs as part of cost-saving measures.

💰 The Finnish Business and Policy Forum EVA finds that most Finns are ready for tax cuts, if they promote economic growth.

🎅 Tourism. The New York Times reports this week that a Lapland tourism boom has been “anything but jolly” for some residents of Santa’s home town Rovaniemi, in a lengthy, mostly critical article.

What do you think? Is Lapland (and especially Rovaniemi) becoming too much of a tourist attraction, and in danger of losing its charm as it gets more popular? Vote below ⬇️

🇫🇮 Happy. What’s it like to live in the happiest country in the world? BBC Travel has a lovely feature by Finland-based author Tim Bird out this week.

Politics insider

📊 Youth. A new survey out this week reveals that many young people aged 12-24 do not believe their voices are heard in politics. That’s the results of a study by Sekasin, an online platform where young people can discuss mental health issues. Some 216 people responded with two-thirds saying they don’t think political decsion-makers are interested in the opinions of young people; while half of respondents don’t think they have enough information about elections, democracy and the voting process.

🇮🇱 Weapons. A new Citizen’s Initiative which would effectively ban Finland from buying military equipment from Israel, will now head to parliament after it gathered the required 50,000 voter signatures. It’s an interesting case, because the initiative had ticked along with a fairly low level of support for the past five months and was not looking like it would succeed. However in the last ten days the petition went from 17,000 signatures to 53,000 signatures, a huge leap.

The petition says more generally: “The initiative proposes that defence procurement should take into account international human rights treaties and the implementation of the objectives of international humanitarian law, as well as other foreign and security policy considerations,” however goes on to cite Israel as an example of a country where Finland should not be spending money buying weapons.

🕵️‍♀️ Meanwhile, in a connected story, it was revealed this week that Finland has been redacting information about the export of weapons and other military equipment to hide the destination country. The report by public broadcaster Yle finds that Ukraine and Israel are often the end users of the exported equipment, but since summer 2021 (during Sanna Marin’s government) the Ministry of Defence has been keeping some of the information on exports a secret, when it was previously in the public domain - at the request of the destination country.

🌲 Trees. Green party leader Sofia Virta has admitted she gave incorrect information about logging activities at a piece of forest partly owned by her husband. The story first ran in Seiska tabloid magazine during the week, accusing Virta’s husband of chopping down 30 hectares of forest in southwest Finland. Virta said this wasn’t true but now (as so often happens) a more nuanced picture has emerged. At first Virta said only about 3 hectares was cleared, and other areas were thinned out to encourage new growth, while some other trees were felled because of a beetle infestation.

But clearing trees and felling them because of beetles is basically the same thing… so Sofia had to concede more than 3 hectares was cut down. But Seiska also had to update their own story with a correction to say they’d also got the facts wrong and had over-stated how much forest area was cleared.

"I have commented on the matter with incomplete information and in the midst of the election rush, but I have not intentionally given false information on the matter,” Virta told public broadcaster Yle.

🌐 Immigration. The Finns Party’s leader Riikka Purra says her party will not promote any immigration measures during the rest of their term in office. That seems par for the course.

🌦️ And Purra is doubling down on playing hardball, telling Ilta Sanomat in an interview that her party wants to repeal the Climate Act, even though it is part of the government’s programme.

🏛️ Former MP Kimmo Sasi (NCP) died on Sunday morning following a period of ill health. The 73-year-old was a Member of Parliament representing North Häme and Pirkanmaa constituencies from 1983 to 2015. In government, he held the portfolios of Minister of Transport and Communications, and Minister of Foreign Trade.

Finland international

🇳🇬 A Nigerian man arrested in Finland on terrorism charges is due to appear in court in June, according to the BBC Pidgin-language news service. Simon Ekpa has described himself as the Prime Minister of the Biafra Republic Government-in-Exile and had been living in Lahti. He was arrested in November last year alongside four others on suspicion of terror-related activities, including incitement to violence and terrorism financing.

1️⃣ Finland is making a good attempt to try and become Europe’s #1 location for startups, according to a new BBC article published this week. But there’s still a long way to go to catch up with Sweden, the author finds.

And finally…

I’ve been seeing so much fun content online from KAJ, the Finnish comedy trio from Ostrobothnia who will be representing Sweden at next month’s Eurovision Song Contest in Basel, Switzerland. In this sketch they talk about winning Eurovision, and making Sweden pay for next year’s event as revenge for Kärijää - Finland’s 2023 Eurovision entrant who came 2nd in that year’s contest.

The group - and their ode to Finnish sauna culture - have been getting some great publicity, including an interview on Good Morning Britain on ITV this week, complete with a sauna virtual set!

Thank you, kiitos, tack!

Thanks so much for reading all the way to the end, amid what I hope is a peaceful and relaxing Easter weekend.

I’m back next Sunday with the latest news and analysis from Finland, carefully curated. In the meantime if you’d like to get in touch with a story idea, news tip, a scoop, or just to say hello then my direct email is [email protected]

Catch you next Sunday!

David