Your columnist has normally avoided reporting of the negative impact of public policy innovations in the Nordics and concentrated on positive impacts of innovations as in public education, healthcare, district heating, public transport, etc…
But the Finns now have a government whose 5 big promises made to voters before the general election in 2023 have now yielded results that can best be described as big mistakes.
The 5 big promises were:
- Balancing Public Finances
- Labour Market and Social Security Reform
- Boosting Education and Skills
- Accelerating Clean Energy
- Strengthening National Security
None of these promises have yielded the desired results with the government blaming almost everybody and everything else but themselves.
Balancing public finances was presented as the heroic mission to rescue the national budget from years of indulgence. The plan resembled putting the entire welfare state on a strict fitness regimen: fewer calories, more discipline, and absolutely no dessert. Citizens were assured that this would be painless — a promise traditionally made right before someone discovers their favourite service has been “temporarily streamlined” into oblivion. The idea was simple: if the numbers look good, surely everyone will feel good too.
Labour market reform arrived with the cheerful slogan of “making work pay”, which in practice often translates into “everyone must work more enthusiastically, with fewer reasons not to”. The reforms aimed to boost employment by removing obstacles — many of which suspiciously resembled safety nets. The theory was that if people feel just uncomfortable enough, they will sprint joyfully into the labour market. Critics noted that this approach treats employment like a cold lake: if you push people in, technically they are swimming.
Education and skills development were framed as the nation’s intellectual renaissance. The ambition was to raise learning outcomes, strengthen research, and ensure every young person becomes a highly skilled contributor to the future economy. A noble goal, though teachers quietly wondered when exactly they were supposed to perform this miracle — between budget cuts, curriculum changes, and the occasional reminder that “innovation” is free if you simply believe hard enough.
Clean energy expansion was the optimistic promise that Finland would soon produce so much renewable power that even the sun might feel underqualified. Doubling clean electricity production sounded impressive, though the details occasionally resembled a wish list written during a particularly enthusiastic brainstorming session. Still, the vision of a carbon neutral future remained bright — powered, ideally, by something more reliable than hope. They even re-opened peat as a source of heat even though it releases high volumes of greenhouse gases!
Finally, national security was elevated to a kind of premium subscription service: more readiness, more border protection, more everything. The message was clear — safety first, questions later. The country would be secure, even if no one could quite agree on what, exactly, it needed to be secure from at any given moment.
