Finnish News Recap, Week 21: Immigration Clash edition

IMMIGRATION FRACAS: After a very uneventful week in the negotiations for a new Finnish government, the negotiations suddenly took a turn to the interesting. Thus far little concrete has been decided, as the center-right National Coalition’s, which runs these negotiations, has wished to focus on economic policy (i.e., austerity) and process what they feel as the lesser issues, like immigration and environmental policy, later. One of the defining features of these governmental negotiations has been secrecy; we don’t know what was on the line in these negotiations and what has been decided.

The right-wing populist Finns Party, on the other hand, cares about these topics a great deal (i.e., they oppose immigration and environmentalism), and made an ultimatum to stop all the other negotiations for the government to get these topics – the ones where they have the most disagreements with the other parties – dealt with for good.

That’s what the negotiators indeed did last week, with the rest of the negotiations shutting down while the parties were hurriedly trying to bang up a compromise on these issues. In the end, the National Coalition and The Finns apparently worked the deal basically out between themselves and then assumed the smaller parties, Christian Democrats and the liberal, pro-immigration Swedish People’s Party would just accept it.

Unsurprisingly, the Swedish People’s Party didn’t at first accept this method for immigration policy. They also questioned the environmental compromise, but this proved easier to accept for them in the end. Their refusal caused considerable speculation on whether this would break the negotiations for good, forcing the leaders to come together late Saturday to offer SPP some extra concessions.

Whether these concessions are meaningful or not depends on who is talking. Some rumors from the negotiations would seem to suggest that the requirement for monthly earnings for labor-related immigration would be lifted from 1300 € / month to 1600 € / month. There is probably going to be a host of measures like family reunification criteria being tightened and so on.

In the end, the compromises probably satisfy all the most important demands for both the liberal and conservative right; the conservatives advance on their goals to run down (admittedly ambitious) environmental goals and legislation and humanitarian immigration, while the liberals ensure that the *optics* remain liberal and progressive on these issues, so as not to scare away potential ESG investments and other business.

Still, there’s a wide chasm between The Finns Party and Swedish People’s Party, which already traditionally hated each other over the fact that that Swedish People’s Party firmly backs official bilingualism in Finland, which the Finns Party opposes. If there’s something that might still bring this government process down or cause a government to fall even if it is formed, it might very well be the friction between these parties.

PRIDE EXCLUSION: Much like elsewhere, the Pride Month, and the assorted demonstrations/parades, are now a public carnival time in Finland. Sections of various political parties – apart from the socially explicitly conservative ones, i.e., Finns Party and Christian Democrats – like participating in Pride-related event, as it is a chance to wear their commitments to the standard modern Western value set on the sleeve.

The Finnish center-right parties, i.e., Center, and National Coalition were thus surprised when it turned out that the organizers of Helsinki Pride, the biggest Pride event in Finland (naturally), had excluded them as parties this year.

The formal reason for this was that their parliamentary groups had been divided when voting for Finland’s new trans self-id law last year. National Coalition had approximately 2/3 of their MPs supporting and 1/3 opposing the self-id law, and as such, NC members have been particularly affronted by this ban after most of their party supported the law. Center Party has been less visible on this – perhaps due to the party’s greater conservatism (roughly half of their MPs opposed the law), perhaps simply because Center Party is mostly a rural party and their Helsinki section is basically a rounding error in local politics.

Of course, many automatically interpreted this as a punishment for the National Coalition trying to build a right-wing government with The Finns Party. Nevertheless, it’s unlikely the new government will tread on this topic too much, as they are already divided on a host of other “values issues” (as the previous section indicated).

It should be clarified that this “ban” doesn’t mean that the members of these parties would be prevented from participating as individuals, just that the advertising materials of the event would not mention these parties (and their youth organizations have been able to do so anyway).

Still, for many, this serves as evidence that Pride is less about LGBTQ+ rights and more about left-wing orthodoxy. Others have wondered whether political parties should participate in the first place, as none of them have a completely spotless record on these matters.

IN OTHER NEWS, Aki Kaurismäki, one of Finland’s most famous movie director ever, wins a price (but not the highest one) at the Cannes film festival, Finland joins NATO’s command structure, and housing prices are dropping steeply.

Image: Riikka Purra, the leader of the Finns Party. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Riikka_Purra_20220702.jpg