The Happiest Country Rejects Divisiveness

 

People in Finland are getting tired of cuts to the welfare state and the anti-immigrant rhetoric in recent years.

On Sunday, April 14^th, Finland had regional and local elections where subnational units, cities and communes elected their representatives. The results were a radical turnaround from the previous national elections in 2023, that ushered in the current right-wing coalition government. This time, the opposition Social Democratic Party gained the most and became the largest party, while the coalition government partners generally lost their shares. Most significantly, the anti-immigration Finns Party suffered a crushing blow.

I arrived in Helsinki soon after and was able to gauge the sentiments of some of the denizens of the capital city where I was born and spent the first 25 years of my life. The admittedly completely unscientific sample consisting of people in my circle nevertheless provided some insights into why this change happened. Mind you, the people I talked with represent a range of very different political views, although they all are from Helsinki and all have been academically educated.

Since the fall of the government of the Social Democratic prime minister Sanna Marin (famous for her social media presence, featuring dancing and partying), Finland has been governed by a right-wing coalition led by Petteri Orpo of the largest conservative party in the country, the National Coalition Party (NCP). In the parliamentary system of Finland where there currently are nine national parties represented in the parliament, no single party will ever come even close to garnering an absolute majority of votes. Consequently, all governments are coalition governments pulled together by the biggest winner of any election. The current government brings together members from the NCP, the Swedish People´s Party (SFP/RKP), the Christian Democrats, and the populist Finns Party. SFP and the Christians are minor players, respectively with 4.3% and 4.2% of the votes in the 2023 elections, but Orpo brought them along to pull together enough for a ruling majority.

The Finns Party with their 20.1% share of the votes in the 2023 election rose to the second place just behind NCP. With this, they laid claim to a large number of seats in the government, including that of the Minister of Finance: Riikka Purra’s rather extreme views regarding immigrants have shocked many citizens, while gaining approval from her supporters.

The government embarked on an unabashed assault on the welfare state that has long been the foundation of the Finnish society, as in its Nordic neighbors. The government policies have focused on cutting public services, including support to health care, students and the unemployed. International development assistance faces reductions of one-quarter of the funding. The government program also includes tax cuts for firms and the wealthy, while the value added tax was increased resulting in higher costs for everyone, including those with the fewest means.

Finland has been ranked the world’s happiest country for eight years in a row. Most of my compatriots scoff at this distinction: we don’t feel that we’re particularly happy—and certainly don’t show it by dancing or hugging each other or smiling excessively. In fact, there’s an old saying in Finland advising us that s/he who is happy should hide their happiness (Kell’ onni on se onnen kätkeköön). The UN-sponsored World Happiness Report ranks countries based on a single question of subjective feeling. But it also looks into areas such as income, healthy life expectancy, social support, generosity, freedom to make life choices, and perceptions of corruption. It clearly doesn’t measure individual happiness. Molly Young in a perceptive article in the New York Times Magazine makes the distinction between “affective” and “evaluative” happiness. The Finnish kind is more the latter, like contentedness.

The fact that Finland has ranked so high on this happiness list for such a long time is largely due to the extensive welfare state. Finland is a high-income country with relatively small differences between the rich and poor, at least compared with the USA. We have world class education (although the standards have sunk somewhat in recent years) and universal healthcare. We have a lengthy life expectancy, which stems partly from that access to healthcare, but also from the clean environment and relatively healthy lifestyle, with most people enjoying outdoors activities in nature. Importantly, the Finns have a high level of trust in each other—a lost wallet is likely to be returned to the rightful owner; and we generally trust our elected officials and government employees to be honest. It’s one of the least corrupt countries in the world (which obviously doesn’t mean everyone is squeaky clean).

The welfare state is of course expensive and has resulted in soaring public debt. It reached 82.1% of GDP in the last quarter of 2024 (which is bad, or not so bad, depending on what you compare with; for neighboring Sweden the percentage is just 46.18% but for the mighty USA it is 97.8%—and counting). Maintaining the welfare state translates into a high rate and highly progressive taxation, which is a constant complaint you hear in Helsinki. The current government’s strategy is to shift the tax burden from firms and wealthy individuals to the everyman, relying on the universally discredited trickle-down theory. When it cuts services at the same time, the result is people being squeezed. Which is not popular.

As a result, the biggest winner in the April elections were the Social Democrats, which collected 22.5% of the vote and became the largest party. The voters’ message was clear: no more cuts. However, the money has to come from somewhere. A professor friend of mine, who is quite unhappy with the current government, also indicated that he would not vote for the Social Democrats because of their profligate spending.

One of the issues plaguing Finland is productivity, which is affected by the population structure. Like most European countries, Finland’s population is aging rapidly (most Asian countries, too, including China and Japan are facing the same trend). Another scientist friend of mine attributed many of Finland’s economic problems to this fundamental issue. The dependency ratio—that is, persons below 15 or over 65 years of age compared to working age population—is now 61.1, with 23.6% of people older than 65. With the below-replacement birth rate of just 1.3 children per woman, and the longevity (79.0 years for men and 84.2 years for women), aging of the population structure is inevitable

Except for immigration. Without it, the Finnish population actually decreased by 17,956 people in 2023. In the same year, net migration to the country was 57,914, thus more than compensating for the decline. The immigrants also tend to be younger, working age adults. Like elsewhere in Europe and the United States, immigration is a hot political issue. The neighboring countries—Russia, Estonia and Sweden—have always been top origins of immigrants, with the addition of Ukrainians since Russia’s attack on the country (while the inflow of Russians has been halted by closed borders). However, it is the immigrants and asylum seekers from countries like Iraq, Somalia, Syria, Afghanistan, and Kurds from Iran and Turkey, who get most of the attention.

The Finns Party built their platform largely on opposing immigration and they were for some years very successful in their strategy. Now the latest election results suggest otherwise. They received only 7.8% of the vote in the regional elections and even less (7.6%) at the municipal level.

Russia with which Finland shares a 1,340 km-long border is a problematic neighbor, not least in recent years. Putin’s aggression in Ukraine and beyond prompted Finland to abandon its traditional neutrality and join NATO in 2024. This decision was supported by an overwhelming majority of Finns, including those I talked with. The highly popular President Alexander Stubb has provided solid leadership in the country and beyond when it comes to foreign policy. (Stubb who started his presidency in 2024 came from NCP. However, in Finland when elected, the president habitually gives up his party affiliation to truly unify the entire nation.)

One friend, an art historian told me that, while she has never been a fan of Russia and has never visited Moscow, she used to travel regularly to St. Petersburg, a cosmopolitan city with handsome architecture and great art collections, only about 380 km from Helsinki. There used to be a lot of cross-border traffic while the border was open. My friend confessed to being a bit nostalgic about the trips but she accepts that the city being off-limits is the price we have to pay.

All parties, including the traditionally anti-NATO Left Alliance, supported Finland’s membership in the military alliance. However, a recent poll shows a decrease in trust in NATO since President Trump has cast doubt on American commitment to come to the aid of fellow NATO members. Still, two-thirds of the Finns support NATO membership. Due to Russia’s proximity and the wars Finland fought with the Soviet Union (1939; and 1941-42), Finland, unlike many other Western European countries, never neglected its own defense or relied solely on US security guarantees. In 2023, it spent 2.4% of its GDP on defense and has pledged to increase spending to 3% before the end of the decade. This obviously poses further budgetary challenges and competes with other needs of the welfare state.

Finland is a country where people live close to nature and it is not surprising that the Greens have been relatively strong. This time around, too, they gathered 9.1% of the vote. I was curious why more Finns don’t vote for the Greens (in fact, their share nationally was almost identical to that of the Left Alliance). I asked two of my friends—a musician and a university professor—about their views. Both gave similar answers, having to do with too broad a coalition of special interests, which dilutes the focus and reduces the excitement regarding the Green agenda. This influence of special interests may be similar to the situation of the Democratic Party in the US.

So far, I’ve written about the country as a whole. Helsinki is a bit of an anomaly. Of Finland’s 5.6 million people, about 1.4 million live in the capital region. There NCP remains dominant, although the Social Democrats almost caught up with them. Although the Greens lost somewhat as compared with the 2021 municipal elections, they still remained the third largest party with 17.9% of the vote. In Helsinki, the Finns Party received only 5.5% of the vote. This reflects the fact that Helsinki is the wealthiest, best educated and most cosmopolitan place in the country. Both the NCP and the Social Democrats are largely supported by urbanites and well-educated people. The same goes for the Greens, while the Finns Party and the Center Party tend to be popular outside of the cities.

Like elsewhere, Finnish politicians and people alike face difficult choices. One fundamental tension is between the financial burden of maintaining the welfare state and the growing fiscal deficits. The need to invest more into defense also competes with other priorities.

The Russian war against Ukraine and the generally unstable situation in Europe and the world, has diverted attention from other issues, such as climate change. Still, a recent survey by the Ministry of the Environment shows that almost everyone (91%) is worried about climate change and global biodiversity loss, and 97% of the respondents believe that clean nature enhances people’s health and well-being.

Another tension appears between the need to maintain Finland’s productivity and working-age population and the perceived problems caused by immigration. While Finland overall is still a fairly low-immigration country, as compared with many other European countries, such as France and Germany (apart from policy, there’s no doubt that the northern climate and the challenging language contribute to this), there has been an increase in recent years. This is felt especially with regard to non-European immigrants whose culture may make assimilation in the Finnish society harder. While 85% of immigrants live in cities, the opposition to them is highest outside, as the support to the Finns Party shows.

As population ages in all major regions of the world, except in Africa, and the UN projects that the global population will start shrinking during the second half of this century, many countries have tried establishing pronatal policies encouraging people to have more children. We do have to have a serious debate of population and whether its continued growth is needed or there are other ways to deal with the challenges (look especially to Japan). But that’s an entirely different discussion for another day.

It will be interesting to see which way future directions in the Finnish politics will turn. As a Finn living outside of the country for many years, I for one will be watching it carefully.

[Originally published at https://juhauitto.substack.com on May 12, 2025.]

Helsinki Summer

Helsinki, my old hometown, which I left more than half a lifetime ago, is a fantastic summer city. During the twelve days I just spent there, the temperature dropped below 25 degrees Celsius only during one day. At times, the heat and humidity were almost unbearable when the sun was burning down from a cloudless sky for almost 20 hours every day. Especially the nights were tough as none of the older buildings have air conditioning and the thick stone walls store heat during the day, which then radiates into the living quarters during night. I suppose the summer nights just are not meant for sleeping.








During days like these, the city is a true delight, with people strolling around languidly in their skimpy summer wear or lying down on the grass in the many parks. Even those having to work tend to take long lunch breaks in places like the Esplanade or the old market place, and then leave their offices in mid-afternoon to spend another day’s worth of light evenings. Terraces seem to sprout everywhere in the city serving cold beer and cider to cool down the dehydrated denizens. Not to forget gin long drink—lovingly known as ‘lonkero’ (meaning tentacle) by the Finns. A readymade concoction consisting of gin and grapefruit soda invented for the 1952 Helsinki Olympics, lonkero will celebrate its 60th anniversary next year—still going strong! And for better or for worse, the Finns like their brews, which they on occasion consume in somewhat unreasonable quantities. At some 9.7 liters per capita annually, Finnish alcohol consumption falls in the international mid-range (for example, for USA the figure is 8.4 liters and for Russia 11 liters), but instead of sipping a glass of wine with our meals, the Finns have the tendency to down it all at once. Not even the high prices, which are rather striking for someone coming from outside of the euro zone, can dampen demand. (In fact, Finland has the dubious distinction of being overall the third most expensive country in Europe, after Norway and Switzerland.)







The Helsinki cityscape has changed considerably since my days there. For one, there has been a notable liberalization of entertainment policies. Restaurants can now stay open until early in the morning (except for the terraces, which must chase their customers indoors at 10 pm so that they don’t disturb the sleep of nearby residents) and they now can—and many do—import their own wines directly from the producing countries. Although not exactly legal, the police do not interfere when people walk around the city or rest in the parks with their own drinks as long as they do not cause any public disturbance.




Another major change in the past couple of decades has been the rapid internationalization of the city. Tourists have of course visited the country also before, but no t in these numbers. Today, walking around Helsinki one can hear a multitude of languages, not only those of the neighboring Scandinavian countries, Russia and Estonia, but virtually any imaginable European and non-European lingo. There are hordes of East Asians, most likely thanks to the national airline, Finnair, which offers the best gateway from Europe to Asia, with daily flights to several destinations in Japan, China, Thailand, India and elsewhere. I stayed in my brother’s apartment and each morning I would wake up to huge tourist buses hauling visitors to the adjacent Temppeliaukio church, famous for having been built inside a rock.




There are also unprecedented numbers of foreign residents in Finland. Many, like Victor who hails from Brazil and married my niece Jenni, have come for personal reasons. Others, in waves of refugees: Chileans after the 1973 coup that killed democratically elected president Salvador Allende and ushered in a period of military dictatorship; then Vietnamese boat people; later Somalis fleeing the chaos in their fractured homeland for safety or for economic reasons; next Libyans, whom Finland has pledged to the United Nations to accommodate. The opponents of Finland’s joining the European Union in 1995 attempted to scare voters that our pure country would be overrun by foreigners because of our strong economy and social security. Such a massive invasion, naturally, never materialized. The Portuguese sardine fishermen or the unemployed Italian autoworkers never moved up to Finland to seek employment with Nokia or the forest industry. The long winters and the thorny language, added to the Europeans’ general reluctance to move outside of their native comfort zone, took care of that. Nevertheless, immigration has steadily increased and with it tensions between the native Finns and the newer inhabitants. One group that is now conspicuous in the city consists of Romanian gypsies who beg professionally on the streets. Their presence has divided the citizenship into the liberals who defend their human rights and wish to extend the social benefits to them, and the average guy who finds them to be a general nuisance.




My friend Ilkka who works in forensic science had been briefed by the Helsinki chief of police who had provided some statistics. Out of the top 20 most wanted criminals in Finland, only one is currently a foreigner, compared with 17 in Sweden. This is, however, rapidly changing and, according to the chief, the next wave of dangerous foreign criminals has already entered the country. Twenty years ago, 17 of the 20 most wanted in Sweden would have been Finns, I pointed out.




Tensions created by the new foreigners in Finland, as well as the plans to bail out Greece and other EU countries whose economy has gone south (even further south, that is, from the Finnish point of view), led to stunning electoral results earlier in the spring. A xenophobic protest party, True Finns, emerged as the third largest party in the parliament. This Finnish version of the Tea Party sees the European Union as the biggest threat to the country’s sovereignty and way of life. Now, in the Finnish political landscape there are numerous parties—some of which survive only one electoral cycle—and no one will ever gain the majority of the vote. In fact, there are several, including the conservative National Coalition Party, the Social Democrats, the rural oriented Centre Party and, now, the True Finns, that all hover around the 20 percent mark. Given the rather parochial perspectives of the True Finns, they were not able to form a government despite their win. Consequently, the leader of the National Coalition Party was charged with the task of putting together a government consisting of its own representatives, the Social Democrats and a bunch of smaller parties. This includes the Greens, who lost a number of seats in the latest election but still got two portfolios in the new government. (I had the pleasure of meeting briefly with the new Minister for International Development, Heidi Hautala, as she was interviewed in a TV program produced by my old friend Matti.) The electoral loss may have been a boon to the Greens, as it shocked many passive supporters to join the party in unprecedented numbers.


On the first Saturday of July the Helsinki Pride events culminated in a massive parade in support of the gay and lesbian communities. The parade passing through the centre of the city demonstrated great solidarity amongst the population, gay and straight alike. A year ago, there had been an attack on the parade by a gang of young right-wingers who used pepper spray and some other gas on the marchers. The perpetrators, all dressed in black, were soon arrested and dealt with. The huge participation in the parade this year must have been partly due to the actions of these nitwits. One of the key demands associated with Helsinki Pride this year was the call for a gender neutral marriage law. Most Finns would either support such legislation or pay little attention to the matter. However, due to the inclusion of the tiny Christian Democratic Party in the new coalition government, the proposal was dropped from the government’s program.





Another distinction of Helsinki is that it has more live music performances per capita than any other European city. Finland is quite well known internationally for its classical musicians and opera singers, like Karita Mattila whose performances at the New York Metropolitan have delighted opera fans (as well as those who found her nude dance as Salome titillating), as well as orchestra conductors, starting with our most famous composer Jean Sibelius. (My friend Vesa, who maintains the Sibelius website linked herewith, has recently published a massive 1,000-page volume about Finnish conductors for which he received the prestigious Finlandia prize for non-fiction.) But most of the live music takes place in clubs (and during the summer in the parks) where varieties of rock, blues and pop are performed.




Unfortunately, the jazz scene these days leaves much to be desired (a glance at the programs of the summer’s ‘jazz festivals’ in Finland reveals that some of the key performers include stars like Tom Jones, Elton John and Jethro Tull, who hardly are at the forefront of contemporary jazz). The most popular joint is Storyville, which I visited one evening with my friend Erkki. On most evenings, the music on offer in the pleasant basement club can barely be called jazz. At best, it tends to fall into the ‘happy jazz’ category or, if you’re lucky, the blues. Storyville’s attraction seems to be more as a venue where middle-aged women and men on the prowl can find each other and dance until it’s time to go home around 3 am (but then the question is, whose home?). Somehow, more ‘serious’ jazz has had a hard time finding a permanent home in Helsinki in the past few years. Even the local franchise of the legendary New York club, Birdland, went bust and closed its doors after just a year of operation. There is a new club, Koko, which I heard about—that it is good and fills a niche for contemporary jazz—but didn’t have the chance to visit.




On my last morning before returning to New York the following day, I walked to the nearby Töölöntori market place for a cup of coffee. Then I continued on a lengthy walk around the shoreline. Helsinki is built on a peninsula and a large number of islands in the Gulf of Finland, so the sea is never far. The Hietaniemi beach was getting crowded already in the morning. People had spread their towels on the sand or on the rocks and grass a bit further from the sea. Pretty girls in bikinis mixed with families and older folks taking in the sun and frolicking in the waves. Had I had one more day I would have risked sunburn and skin cancer and joined them. But alas, time flies and holidays are never long enough.




The rest of the day was spent with my friend Kari. We met early in the afternoon in the city centre. The day was already hot and the previous night had been quite late, so we decided to sit down, refresh ourselves with a lonkero and plan our route. We ended up walking for kilometers in the midday sunshine, exploring shops where I would purchase things to bring back home—Finnish music, a couple of novels (it is too seldom I read in my native language anymore), food items (such as hard bread, fish preserves, mustard) that may have more childhood nostalgia than actual nutritional value—and stopping at intervals to gather strength on a shady terrace. The long day—and my vacation back in the old country—ended on Kari’s balcony where we sat listening to an eclectic collection of music from our youth—ranging from old favorites (Kate Bush, Boz Scaggs and others) to 1970s Finnish progressive jazz of Eero Koivistoinen—watching the sun go down but never quite set far behind the horizon.