Petteri Orpo, leader of the centre-right National Coalition party in Finland, said on April 27 that he wants to work with the right-wing Finns party in order to form a Conservative government.
If talks are successful, the views of the Eurosceptic and migration-critical Finns party will resonate from Helsinki to Brussels
Formal negotiations to form a government will start on May 2. The National Coalition party will talk with the Finns, the Christian Democrats, and the Swedish People’s party. Orpo, a fiscal conservative, is tipped to become prime minister.
The National Coalition and the Finns were both in opposition before winning the elections on April 2. The ruling Social Democratic Party of Sanna Marin fared reasonably well, but her left-wing coalition partners lost heavily.
The new government would have a comfortable majority, with the National Coalition winning 48 seats, the Finns 46, the Swedish People’s Party 9 and the Christian Democrats 5. Together they have 108 seats of 200 in the national parliament.
A coalition with a party like the Finns is not uncontested. The party is considered “far-right” by some and is opposed to more migration towards Finland. The leader of the Finns party, Riikka Purra, said her party would like to curb both humanitarian and work-based immigration from outside of Europe. “Since I was elected party leader … I have made it clear that immigration, which is a threat to both security and the economy, is a very important issue to us,” Purra said on Thursday.
Orpo has suggested he is ready to review asylum policy but wants to continue to welcome skilled workers to Finland.
The state of the country’s public finances is likely to be another contentious issue. The new government will have to decide where spending cuts will have to fall and which taxes will go up.
On climate objectives, the goal remains a carbon-neutral Finland by 2035, “but in such a way that Finland’s competitiveness will not be destroyed and Finns’ daily costs will not increase,” according to Orpo.
The Finnish swing to the right follows its Nordic neighbour, Sweden, where the Sweden Democrats won the elections and became pivotal in supporting the new government of Sweden earlier this year. Ideologically, the Finns party and Sweden Democrats share a close affinity, particularly on migration.
