Finnish News Recap, Week 19: Eurovision Mania Edition

EUROVISION FEVER: I wrote about the Eurovision yesterday. When it comes to Finland, specifically, though, it cannot be emphasized how the whole country was in the grips of absolute Eurovision mania for a week preceding the event. Already before the contest, there were strong signs that this year Finland would do well.

This set the stage for a runup period where various green goods would sell like hotcakes in preparation for Eurovision parties and organization after organization changed their profile pictures to resemble the iconic look of Käärijä, the Finnish contestant. You can see examples here; it is not a short list.

Naturally, once the votes were in and we lost, this turned into disappointment – not at Käärijä, who received a hero’s welcome, but chiefly at Eurovision juries, and also towards Sweden for winning with a fairly formulaic entry delivered by a previous contest winner.

Finns tends to have an inferiority complex towards Sweden anyway, which bubbles to the surface during times like these. However, the Swedes also are upset about the fact that the Finns are upset – for instance, the fact that Finns tactically refrained from giving any popular vote score to Loreen seems to have stuck to the craw.

ORPO’S HEALTH CARE SURPRISE: Governmental negotiations continue. One guiding theme for the to-be-formed right-wing government is that all potential government partners agree on the need for austerity, even if they disagree on what to cut.

Before the election, Orpo and National Coalition banged on about their “6+3” model of budget adjustment – €6 billion worth of adjustment this parliamentary period (4 years), €3 billion for the next. This six billion is supposed to be partly direct cuts, partly “employment measures” (which, in effect, are also cuts, such as to unemployment benefits) and, for some minor part, taxes. Orpo has maintained the theme of economic difficulties after the election.

Perhaps the National Coalition is getting their wishes *too* easily, as Orpo’s main theme for the last week was being “surprised” about the dire condition of the Finnish health care system. One might think this would be used to argue for more spending, but the reference is to the supposed bloated budgets.

While of course not mentioning anything of the sort during the election, Orpo is now thinking about 1 billion € worth of specifically health-and-social-care-system-related budget adjustment. It remains to be seen if this happens – if it does, it can hardly help but add to the system’s troubles.

One minor theme is that many people now support a health tax for sugar and other such things. National Coalition also had it in their program, only to immediately back out of it after the election after the candy lobby made some noise and dismissing it as “ceremonial speech,” which caused a fair amount of mockery.

In other news, caretaker prime minister Sanna Marin and her husband Markus Räikkönen file for divorce, and an (apparently very flimsy) walking bridge fell down in Espoo, a city in the capital region.

Image source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:K%C3%A4%C3%A4rij%C3%A4#/media/File:K%C3%A4%C3%A4rij%C3%A4_(2023).jpg