The year 2015 is important for Finland’s future. The new government has a large burden on their back as the previous government’s goals and actions didn’t meet up the expectations. They weren’t able to raise Finland back to her feet from the structural change of economy along with the economic crisis which began from the United States in 2008 .

Previous government is regarded as a failure. Their government programme for its part was created on far too optimistic and weak assumptions and that combined with the weak ability to pass new reforms, Finland’s budget kept being deficient. Consequences of this is that Finland’s Standard & Poor’s credit rating dropped from three A’s to two A’s and the citizens’ trust in members of parliament is decreasing all the time.

Now the government has the struggle to regain the trust of citizens and to stop debting. If we look the bright side, they have lots of experts in their use while they are planning something new. The last government used these experts a lot, but for some reason the experts’ reports did not have much impact on the government’s deciding. If looked this from another perspective, now the new government has a lot of reports and helpful information already made by experts, so they just need to turn them into reality. Also many experts criticize that Finland’s government need to stop listening the people who have the loudest voice, instead they need to learn to listen to the people who have the most expertise.
The most important thing for Finland, which is dependent on export, is that by increasing productivity and lowering manufacturing expenses it can increase export and keep the public services running. If it is so easy why are we still increasing our debt year by year? The labor market organisation is demanding bigger yearly salary raises as the purchasing power is decreasing all the time. At the same time the government is planning to cut the costs of work, it’s a difficult situation for both parties. The economic crisis which began from the USA had a large impact on Finland’s GDP and export, combined with the structural change which is still going on in Finland, the new government will have a lot of work ahead.

Last government wasn’t able to run any big and dramatic changes as the government were so big, as it had a lot of political parties in it and they just weren’t able to find any compromises. The new government’s composition needs to be suitable for making big changes, big changes also mean unpleasant changes. If not so, the future of this wellfare-nation is sad and grey, as the maintenance ratio is getting more and more unfavourable as the time goes by while the birth rate is getting lower and the life-expectancy is getting higher and higher. This problem is solvable with immigration but citizens find it a very poor way to fix it as the unemployment rate is high at the same time. The new government is also expected to make big changes in tax-policies and transferring payments. The changes are not for just citizens, the government is planning to optimize the public services closer to the same efficiency as the private sector.

The next four years will bring lots of changes to Finland and it’s sure that it will include negative changes as well, but as everybody knows, Finland cannot continue her old habits any longer.

Ville-Markus Kiviharju