Voters are rallying behind  the immigration-sceptic Finns Party  according to Yle’s latest political barometer, which shows the group with 15.1 percent approval. The party posted a 1.8-percentage-point gain in the poll to outstrip Prime Minister  Juha Sipilä ’s Centre Party and grab third place as the country’s most popular political force.
 According to research director  Tuomas Turja  of pollster Taloustutkimus, the growth in backing for the Finns Party was especially due to so-called "sleeping voters" gravitating toward the nationalistic group.
 "The Finns Party are now getting more supporters from those who didn’t know or didn’t want to say which party they voted for in the 2015 election," Turja added.
 In spite of the Finns Party’s pre-election surge, the largest opposition group, the Social Democratic Party, remains at the top of the voter approval poll with 20.1 percent support, despite losing 1.2 percentage points of voter backing.
 Meanwhile the National Coalition Party led by Finance Minister  Petteri Orpo  retained its second-place ranking with 15.8 percent approval, down marginally by 0.4 percentage points from a previous poll released on 7 March. At the same time, the NCP has narrowed the gap with the SDP.
 According to Turja any confusion caused by  the SDP’s stance on meat consumption  was not reflected in the outcome of Friday’s survey. "The last week of measurement was the best for the SDP," the researcher noted.
 Small boost for Centre after govt resignation
 Juha Sipilä’s Centre Party saw a marginal bump in its approval rating, which edged up by 0.3 percentage points to 14.4 percent but was pushed into fourth place by the rise of the Finns Party.
 Just one day after the last Yle poll, Sipilä marched to President  Sauli Niinistö ’s residence at Mäntyniemi to  announce his government’s resignation  over its failed social and health care reform programme. Reports indicated that the PM’s decision to quit government had affected the party’s election campaign. However the pollster did not see much evidence of this in the survey.
 "The weekly results show that the support for the Centre rose in the week after the government’s resignation. However after that it has remained unchanged. There was no evidence of a major spike," Turja commented.
 Now in fifth place in the party ranking, the Greens have the support of 13 percent of voters, down 0.7 percentage points from the previous poll three weeks ago. Immediately trailing in sixth place, the Left Alliance saw a slight rise of 0.9 percentage points to settle at 9.8 percent voter backing. Taloustutkimus speculated that poll respondents may have switched allegiance from the Greens and the SDP to the Left.
 According to Turja, all of the changes in Friday’s poll fall well within the survey’s margin of error of +/-2.3 percentage points. He noted that the margin of error is somewhat larger than usual because the sample size was smaller and the survey period was shorter than before.
 Finnish politics converging with Europe
 Researcher  Johanna Vuorelma  of Tampere University noted that the margins separating parties in the Yle polls have narrowed.
 "The fact that we see four parties separated by less than three percentage points is a very different situation than two years ago, for example," she pointed out, referring to municipal elections that took place in 2017.
 "We can see a very European development there. The landscape is fragmenting and no one party alone has the top position," she added.
 She remarked that voter activity is likely to influence a party’s popularity. For example, Finns Party backers may include people who are highly likely not to vote.
 "In many ways, support for the Finns Party is difficult to forecast. But it could be that the party could once more surprise us during the election," Vuorelma said, adding that minimal polling differences among parties also makes government negotiations trickier.
 47 seats for the SDP
 Since the beginning of the year, Taloustutkimus has calculated the number of MPs parties would seat based on successive polls, compared to their current representation in parliament.
 The calculations have been based on poll results gathered over the past six months, which means that the projected number of seats may differ from individual survey outcomes.
 Based on current calculations the SDP, which has been leading in the polls, would win 13 additional seats, easily making it the largest political party with 47 MPs.
 The pollster Taloustutkimus interviewed just under 2,000 respondents for the survey between 6 and 26 March.


A fresh Yle poll shows Prime Minister  Juha Sipilä 's Centre Party hobbling toward next month's general election  with 14.4 percent voter support . Political commentator  Sini Korpinen  and journalist  Sam Kingsley  told APN that the party may be heading for one of its poorest election outcomes, if Friday's poll is anything to go by.
 According to the pundits, Juha Sipilä has gone from being a promising "breath of fresh air" as a political neophyte who took over the party in 2015, to being the face of an government that introduced deep austerity cuts. If Sipilä is to be believed, he will  step down as party chair  if the Centre doesn't do well in the election on 14 April.
 Centre in opposition?
 Korpinen said that while the Centre has proved willing to experiment with new leadership in the past -- for example electing urbanite  Mari Kiviniemi  as chair in 2010 -- it will have to contend with traditionalists among its ranks. She added that the Centre's current polling may also suggest that it will likely sit out the next term in opposition, more so since it has typically not fared well in the polls after being in an administration that includes  Petteri Orpo 's National Coalition Party.
 APN's panelists also dissected Environment Minister  Kimmo Tiilikainen 's boast on  Yle News' election debate earlier this week  that the government was able to meet and exceed its employment target of 72 percent, paving the way for the next administration to build on its accomplishments.
 Korpinen said that the next government will likely have to make equally painful decisions to implement more spending cuts and to take forward much-needed social and health care reform. Kingsley, meanwhile, pointed out that the quality of the jobs responsible for the growth in employment was questionable, as many were not stable full-time positions.
 Party views in Yle News' election debate
 If you missed the live broadcast of the Yle News election debate, you can still catch the programme  on our website , on  Yle Areena  and  our Facebook page .
 If you have any questions, or would like to share something on your mind, just contact us via WhatsApp on +358 44 421 0909, on our Facebook or Twitter account, or at yle.news@yle.fi.
 The All Points North podcast is a weekly look at what's going on in Finland. Subscribe via  iTunes  (and leave a review!), listen  on Spotify  and  Yle Areena  or find it on your favourite podcatching app or via our  RSS feed .
 This week's podcast episode was presented by  Zena Iovino  and  Mark B. Odom .  Denise Wall  was the producer, and the sound engineer was  Jami Auvinen .


From 1 April, Finnish citizens living abroad will no longer be eligible for the full range of benefits provided by benefits agency Kela.
 Daily Helsingin Sanomat writes  that the period of benefit eligibility used to be one year for citizens of Finland moving to live in another country; now the social security institution Kela will revoke a recipient's benefits after just six months of living abroad. Even a brief stint of work in another EU country may also lead to benefit revocation, although the right is reinstated once the worker returns to live indefinitely in Finland.
 HS reports that tens of thousands of Finnish citizens will be affected by the change as they travel across the border, some numerous times a year.
 "It's a real puzzle especially when migrating outward from Finland," said Kela lawyer  Antti Klemola . "Kela will no longer decide on the right to social benefits as a separate ruling; instead the right will now be decided case by case when applying for assistance."
 On the other hand, employees or researchers sent away on a work assignment may still receive Kela benefits for as long as five years during their stay. Students leaving to study as well as their family members will still be entitled to Kela benefits.
 Klemola said in HS that the six-month benefit residence period includes some wiggle room created by EU legislation. Negotiations are usually conducted with the authorities of the country in question.
 "For Finnish pensioners who winter in Spain, for instance, Kela will use EU law to determine whether Finland or Spain is the customer's country of residence. That is, where they have the strongest ties."
 Kela pays out pensions within the European Union regardless of the recipient's country of residence.
 Consulates cut back, sell silverware (?)
 Britain's fraught exit from the EU is causing ripples across the world already, including at Britain's diplomatic operations in Finland,  regional paper Turun Sanomat  wrote in an April Fool's Day joke article.
 According to the paper, consular services offices in the small towns of Raahe, Kokkola and Kristiinankaupunki are being shut down outright, while the Turku office will keep serving expatriate Brits but with less resources than before. The consulate's silverware, vases, furniture, candelabras and other precious items will be auctioned off on Monday.
 "We find this very unfortunate, but we have to work with what we've got," TS quotes Foreign Affairs publicist  Christine Keeler  as saying. "UK funds are being directed toward developing ties with non-EU countries ahead of Brexit."
 The public is invited to view the items on sale at Turku's volunteer fire department building or "WPK house" on 1 April, where the auction will commence at 12 noon, the paper reports.
 Online error boosts right-wing election vid
 Meanwhile national broadcaster Yle publicly apologised to Finns Party chair  Jussi Halla-aho  for accidentally removing his pre-election interview clip from the online Areena service over the weekend.
 Aamulehti reports  that an update to Yle's publication platform caused Halla-aho's video and several dozen other programmes to be temporarily unavailable on the website.
 The problem was fixed by Sunday evening, with Yle head of communications  Jere Nurminen  saying in AL that the view counter for Halla-aho's video did not reset. The party chair's interview jumped right to the top of the list of most viewed election content at over 100,000 views after he tweeted about the glitch, beating out Prime Minister  Juha Sipilä 's election interview by some 10,000 views.
 Yle CEO  Merja Ylä-Anttila  offered her apologies for the error via Twitter.
 Edit: Clarified Kela benefits story.
 Edit: Yle News was clearly fooled by Turun Sanomat's article on UK consulate office closings. Touché, TS.


Daily Helsingin Sanomat reports that  advance voting in the parliamentary elections begins on  Wednesday. In Finland, voters will be able to cast their ballot in advance until 9 April at any advance voting station in the country or abroad. Outside of Finland, however, the advance voting period is shorter, as it ends on 6 April.
 The paper offers some advice to prospective voters. Some form of photo ID such as a valid passport or driver's license is required at the polling station. Voters must go alone into the booth to mark their ballot. Children are allowed to accompany adults, but not dogs.
 Write only the candidate's number on the ballot, nothing else – or your vote may be rejected. HS also advises voters to write sevens with a line in the middle, as is the custom in parts of Europe and Latin America, to distinguish them from the number one. If you make a mistake, do not cross it out; ask for a new ballot instead.
 The official Election Day is on 14 April. On this day, voters must go to the appointed polling station stated on the ballot paper they should have received in the post. A justice ministry representative tells the paper that this is because election officials wish to count the number of votes cast at each station. Although in Finland the results are usually quite clear already by 10 pm on Election Day, official election results won't be confirmed until 17 April.
 The newly-elected Finnish Parliament will begin its work after the Easter holiday, on Tuesday, 23 April.
 Either NCP or Centre, with a side of Greens
 Business weekly Talouselämä interviews Social Democratic Party (SDP) chair  Antti Rinne , whose party has been consistently out in front in  recent voter opinion polls . If his party wins the highest proportional number of seats on 14 April, Rinne will be in charge of putting together the next coalition government to rule the country for the next four years.
 Talouselämä asks him the question that is on many peoples' minds:  Who does he plan to ask to join the SDP in government, if the party emerges a clear winner at the polls ?
 "I believe that if we are in government, then either the National Coalition Party (NCP) or the Centre Party would also be there. In addition, it looks quite clear that the Greens will be in the government. And then, if what I heard in Li's [Andersson] Yle interview is true, the Left Alliance's stance has changed a bit, and they would also join, if the NCP does not hold the prime minister position," Rinne told the paper.
 Rinne stresses that SDP success on 14 April is not a foregone conclusion, however. Talouselämä says he has reason to be cautious, as SDP voters are notoriously unreliable about showing up to vote. The publication points out that the Social Democrats also led public opinion polls in the 2017 municipal elections, but when the results were tallied, the NCP came out on top.
 Talouselämä says that even if Rinne were to win a mandate from the people, government formation is no easy task in Finland, nor is working with it once it has been created. It writes that every government in the last 16 years has suffered from "in-fighting or prime minister problems". The last government to serve out an entire term was Paavo Lipponen's coalition in 1999-2003, although the Greens walked out of that coalition before the term was out.
 Only one in three firms have ethical guidelines
 And the southwest newspaper Turun Sanomat writes about  inadequate ethical guidelines in Finnish companies .
 A Nordic Business Ethics Survey from early 2019 comparing Finland, Sweden and Norway has determined that only 35 percent of Finnish companies have ethical guidelines in place, compared to 69 percent of Norwegian companies and 64 percent of Swedish companies.
 The group behind the survey was shocked to see how many workers in Finland had no idea if their company even had a code of conduct. If they knew of one, they did not know its content, TS writes. The survey also discovered a paucity of training in this area, with only one-third of respondents saying they had participated in a company function in which these matters were outlined.
 The survey also found that 28 percent of respondents in Finland did not know the procedure for reporting unethical practices in line with organisational guidelines. The paper suggests that this is a worrying phenomenon in light of recent  impropriety in the financial sector , for example.


With less than two weeks away to parliamentary elections on 14 April, nine of Finland's minor parties made their stances known in a debate hosted by public broadcaster Yle on Tuesday evening.
 According to opinion polls, none of the parties appear to have any chance of getting into government. Yle's most recent political party poll found there was about 3.1 percent voter support for all of the minor parties combined.
 That same  poll  found that the combined voter support for the top three major parties last month - including the Social Democrats, National Coalition Party and the Finns Party - was 51 percent.
 Given their positions, if the minor parties somehow did ascend to government the country's policies and laws would look quite different than they are today.
 The parties that participated* in Tuesday's debate included:
 Feminist Party Citizens' Party Finnish People First Pirate Party Animal Justice Party of Finland Liberal Party Communist Party of Finland Communist Workers' Party Independence Party
 Climate change
 Global climate change is one of the top concerns among voters, according to several recent political surveys. In response to a straw poll question on whether climate change is a looming threat, seven party representatives answered yes, while two others said no.
 Chair of the anti- immigration party Finnish People First,  Marco de Wit , characterised the concept of global climate change as "propaganda." The EU-sceptic Citizens' Party's  Sami Kilpeläinen  agreed.
 "Each and every one of us can certainly do something to slow down climate change, but the threat [of climate change] is exaggerated," Kilpeläinen said.
 The chair of the Feminist Party,  Katju Aro , disagreed.
 "We must stop global warming temperature [levels] at 1.5 degrees (Celsius) and cut our carbon output by 2030 at the latest - that's completely clear. We still have a lot to do," Aro said.
 Tea Törmänen , chair of the Liberal Party, said that Finland should take advantage of climate change as a business opportunity, saying the country could sell its technical expertise in areas like nuclear energy abroad.
 Meanwhile, the Pirate Party's  Petrus Pennanen  said that half of the carbon emissions in Helsinki were due to the use of fossil fuels for its district heating system and said it could be powered by small-scale nuclear power plants.
 Fundamental outliers
 In the unlikely scenario that the Communist Workers' Party was voted into government, the party's chair,  Mikko Vartiainen , said it would likely be difficult to find other parties with similar values with which to cooperate.
 "No parliamentary group has the same goal as us, that is, to overthrow capitalism and replace it with socialism," Vartiainen said.
 The ideological differences between the various parties were sometimes major, particularly when it came to the topic of national defence.
 Regarding international military assistance from outside the country, the Citizens' Party's Kilpeläinen said that he would not support having foreign soldiers on Finnish territory "under any circumstances."
 He said that the party would like to stop Finland's international defence cooperation with Nato as well as Sweden.
 Both representatives from the Independence Party and Finnish People First said that they would like to put a stop to international military cooperation.
 A straw poll on whether or not the representatives would consider Finland as part of the West in the face of a world conflict resulted in six parties answering yes. The Independence Party, the Citizens' Party and the Finnish People First party all said no.
 Health care reform
 Last month Prime Minister  Juha Sipilä 's centre-right government collapsed in the final weeks of its four-year term after long-planned reforms of the country's health and social care system (colloquially known as  sote )  failed .
 The Pirate Party's Pennanensaid he wasn't a believer in the reform's aim to significantly re-consolidate the country's health care system by region.
 "We already have five districts for specialised health care services in Finland - it's a good foundation on which to build. The municipality-based system can be developed further, but the state must be prepared to assist municipalities that can't manage on their own," Pennanen said
 Conscription and hate speech
 The topic of Finland's conscription system was raised by both the Feminist and Liberal parties, but in terms of equality. Currently only young men are required to serve in the military, but women are able to do so voluntarily.
 "We absolutely support gender-neutral conscription, our present system is really unfair," the Liberal Party's Törmänen said.
 The Feminist Party's Aro said she has has been the target of hate speech and the recipient of hate mail.
 "I have received a good deal of various [kinds of] hate mail. Our voters and supporters have too, some of whom are immigrants. I don't agree with the notion that forbidding hate speech is a form of limiting free speech," Aro said.
 However Kilpeläinen of the Citizens' Party said that the police have better things to do than enforcing hate speech laws.
 "Hate speech is a fictitious concept. The powers of police are being used to control others. We already have defamation laws. Why are we even talking about hate speech?" Kilpeläinen said.
 Neither of the communist parties could come to agreement on the topic of hate speech.
 Mikko Vartiainen , chair of the Communist Workers' Party, said that there are already laws on the books prohibiting incitement to hate and violence.
 But chair of the Communist Party of Finland,  Juha-Pekka Väisänen , said thathe would be prepared to ban hate speech.
 _  The relatively newly-minted Seven Star Movement was also invited to the debate but the  party's  founder and chair  *Paavo Väyrynen  declined._


Finland's centre-right National Coalition Party will likely be asked to join in a coalition with the Social Democratic Party, if both parties win enough votes, according to political commentator  Sini Korpinen  and journalist  Sam Kingsley  who joined APN to talk about the NCP's prospects in the election and its potential role in a future government.
 NCP party chair  Petteri Orpo  recently beat the SDP chair in a public opinion poll as a more popular prime minister choice than SDP chair  Antti Rinne , proving he has greater appeal among the electorate.
 Yle's  latest voter survey  shows the NCP trailing the poll-topper Social Democrats, with 15.8 percent and 20.1 percent voter support respectively. SDP leaders have  made noises  about possibly asking the NCP to join them in the governing coalition, if the labour-friendly group comes out on top after 14 April.
 In the event that the third-place Finns Party wins big at the ballot box, Kingsley said he could also see the NCP being one of the few political parties willing to work with the nationalists, because both parties just came out of a four years of cooperation.
 Korpinen said she believes that the NCP has clearly taken a more conservative turn in response to the rising popularity of the Finns Party. Both she and Kingsley surmised that, for example, countryside billboards defending the use of private cars may end up being a misstep with eco-conscious urban voters, however.
 Korpinen also suggested that the NCP's role in the social and health care reform could also be construed as an attack on the welfare state, and this too may cost it votes on the upcoming parliamentary elections.
 Check out the Yle News election debate for more
 If you missed the live broadcast of the Yle News election debate, you can still catch the programme  on our website , on  Yle Areena  and  our Facebook page .
 If you have any questions, or would like to share something on your mind, just contact us via WhatsApp on +358 44 421 0909, on our Facebook or Twitter account, or at yle.news@yle.fi.
 The All Points North podcast is a weekly look at what's going on in Finland. Subscribe via  iTunes  (and leave a review!), listen  on Spotify  and  Yle Areena  or find it on your favourite podcatching app or via our  RSS feed .
 This week's podcast episode was presented by  Denise Wall  and  Zena Iovino , with additional reporting byDenise.  Pamela Kaskinen  was the producer, and the sound engineer was  Pasi Ilkka .


Election officials began a vote recount in the electoral district of Satakunta in western Finland on Monday, following  Sunday's general election . The review, which was due to take place at a local police station, means that an official result for the parliamentary seat may not be available until Tuesday. The results of Sunday's election is scheduled to be confirmed by the Justice Ministry on Wednesday.
 Antti Rinne ’s SDP won three seats in the Satakunta district by razor thin margins. If just additional 100 votes are awarded to  Juha Sipilä ’s Centre Party in the recount, it could win an additional in the district and the SDP’s elected MPs in the region would fall to two.
 Losing one seat would mean that the Finns Party and the SDP would draw level with 39 seats each overall, although the centre-left party garnered a slightly larger share of the vote than the populists. The Centre meanwhile, would see its parliamentary seat count rise to 32. That outcome could upend the calculus  with regard to government formation talks .
 Lapland district also closely contested
 Chair of the electoral district,  Vappu Laukkanen  said that it is very rare for recounts to yield any major surprises. She noted that they generally involve a few votes that have either been miscounted due to negligence, or assigned to the wrong candidate.
 Justice Ministry election director,  Arto Jääskeläinen , said that it is extremely uncommon for seats to be re-assigned from one party to another following a recount. However he noted that it is more likely for the votes counted in favour of different candidates from the same party to change.
 In addition to Satakunta, the situation in the Lapland electoral district is also close. In that case the Greens would need fewer than ten additional votes to sweep one seat from the Centre Party. Based on Sunday night’s results, the Centre Party won three seats in Lapland, followed by the Finns Party, the National Coalition Party, the Social Democratic Party and the Left Alliance, all with one seat each.
 Sunday's election saw government parties with the exception of the National Coalition Party  suffer heavy losses , while opposition parties gained additional seats or hold their ground in the parliament..


This April Finland elects a new parliament and ahead of that poll Yle News hosted an election debate featuring all of the major parties to grill them - in English - about their plans for Finland’s future.
 The debate has already been streamed on Yle Areena nearly 10,000 times and seen by almost 7,000 others on Facebook since it was broadcast live on 25 March.
 Take a moment to listen to the debate, especially if you're concerned about the climate, worried about your wages or enthusiastic about education issues in Finland.
 The debate participants were:
 Elina Lepomäki , National Coalition Party MP Laura Huhtasaari , Finns Party MP Kimmo Tiilikainen , Centre Party Minister of the Environment Tiina Ahva , Blue Reform third VP Anders Adlercreutz , Swedish People’s Party MP Veronika Honkasalo , Left Alliance MP Olli-Poika Parviainen , Greens MP Aki Ruotsala , Christian Democrats candidate Party secretary  Antton Rönnholm , Social Democratic Party (not running in election)
 The debate hosts and moderators were Yle News’  Denise Wall  and  Zena Iovino .
 Our general election coverage includes a really simple guide, the ‘election compass’ that shows you which candidates most closely reflect your views, a series of in-depth podcasts on each of the nine largest parties, and of course up-to-the-minute results on election night itself, 14 April. The video version of the programme can be found  here .
 If you have any questions, or would like to share something on your mind, just contact us via WhatsApp on +358 44 421 0909, on our Facebook or Twitter account, or email us at yle.news@yle.fi.


The nationalist Finns Party has accelerated past the centre-right National Coalition Party to claim second place in a pre-election poll released by Yle on Thursday.
 With parliamentary elections due on Sunday, the Finns Party now have 16.3 percent voter support, up from 15.1 percent in  a previous poll in late March . Thursday’s result represents a 1.2-percentage-point increase from last month and a six-percentage point rise from last autumn.
 Yle election analyst, parliamentary researcher  Sami Borg  from Tampere University, attributed the Finns Party’s voter approval boost  to national discourse about sexual offences and immigration  that ignited toward the end of last year.
 "With respect to the climate change debate, the Finns Party has also successfully offered a clear alternative and a different perspective compared to other parties. And [party leader  Jussi ]  Halla-aho  has also clearly run a successful campaign", Borg explained.
 Research director  Tuomo Turja  of pollster Taloustutkimus said that the Finns Party  has been able to attract  many new supporters from the ranks of people who abstained from voting in the last general election. He said the party was also able entice voters who would have typically voted for the Centre Party, the National Coalition Party, and to some extent the poll-topping Social Democratic Party.
 While the SDP led by  Antti Rinne  has held on to the lead in the Yle poll for the entire year, it saw voter approval slip below the 20-percent mark to 19 percent, down 1.1-percentage-point from the late March survey.
 "It is often the case that the poll-leader’s margin narrows in the last survey," Turja noted, adding that the same happened to the Centre Party just before the last parliamentary election in 2015.
 The pollster noted that all of the changes in party popularity were well within the poll’s 2.3-percentage-point margin of error.
 The Finns Party’s pre-election surge has pushed the National Coalition Party into third place in voter approval, with 15.9 percent support. Prime Minister  Juha Sipilä’ s Centre Party remained in fourth place with 14.5 percent backing.
 Second place still wide open
 The survey indicates that the race to become the country’s most popular political party continues to intensify, given the drop in support for the SDP to under 20 percent, the first time in more than a year that it has slipped below this boundary.
 The pollster said that it would be unusual for no party to corner more than 20 percent of ballots in the election. The closest similar situation occurred during the 2011 general election, when the NCP scraped together 20.4 percent of voter ballots.
 According to Borg, there doesn’t seem to be any ambiguity about the parties’ final order at the finish line, but the SDP will emerge as the winner of the election based on different metrics.
 "From the SDP’s perspective, what is essential is the lead over the other parties. The difference appears to be on the order of two to three percentage points, so the party appears to have a rather secure lead compared to previous elections since 2000," he added.
 However Turja from Taloustutkimus appeared reluctant to declare any election winners just yet.
 "Research shows that increasing numbers of voters take their decision about whom to vote for right down to the wire, even on voting day," he noted.
 "Regardless of who wins the election, it will be difficult to form a government with these numbers. At least second place is wide open, with two or three parties competing for it."
 Finns Party and Greens voters most undecided
 In addition to the SDP, voters also cooled on the Left Alliance and the Greens in the latest survey. The Greens saw voter approval edge down 0.8-percentage-point to 12.2 percent. However, compared to the 2015 election, the current level of support is likely to give the party its best election outcome. Meanwhile, support for the Left Alliance slid 1.1 percentage point to 8.7 percent in Yle’s fresh barometer.
 Turja pointed out that for the Finns Party and the Greens in particular the election result will depend on how well they are able to activate their supporters.
 Thursday’s poll also asked voters how certain they were about their choice of party. The survey included people who had already cast their ballots during advance voting, as well as others who said they planned to exercise their franchise. Respondents were interviewed during advance voting.
 "The Finns Party’s challenge is most certainly that of all the largest parties, they absolutely have the highest number of undecided voters. Their voting certainty is weaker than that of the other parties," Turja expanded.
 On the other hand, the poll indicated that  Petteri Orpo ’s NCP had the most unwavering voters.
 Among the smaller parties, the Swedish People’s Party saw a 0.6-percentage-point bump that took its backing to 4.9 percent, while the Christian Democrats experienced a similar blip to reach 4.3 percent.
 Among the major parliamentary groups, the Blue Reform trailed the field with 0.8 percent voter backing, down 0.1 percentage point from the last survey. Turja described the party’s election prospects as “very bad”.
 "The Blues' only chance is for one of their best-known candidates to be elected in the Uusimaa electoral district," he concluded.


9am:  Polls open. If you are heading to the polls on Sunday, be sure to check out our  handy guide  to casting your ballot in the election. For a quick refresher on what parties and candidates stand for in these elections, head on over to our  English-language election compass  to get your bearings. The Ministry of Justice which oversees elections in Finland will begin releasing  preliminary results  from 8pm on Sunday evening.


Yle's last  pre-election poll released on Thursday  shows the Social Democratic Party (SDP) leading the field but with somewhat less support from voters. The SDP now has 19 percent voter backing and the Finns Party have leap-frogged over the National Coalition Party to take second place with 16.3 percent approval.
 APN's resident pundits  Sini Korpinen  and  Sam Kingsley  were on hand to comment on the rather surprising development and speculate on which parties might be a part of Finland's next governing coalition. Both agreed that the SDP is likely to come out the leader in 14 April voting, despite an election platform that didn't seem to differ from many of the others on offer.
 Korpinen said she doubts that SDP party chair  Antti Rinne  would be able to partner with the nationalistic climate-change-denier Finns Party, wagering that the NCP and Greens might be the preferred partners. Kingsley disagreed, saying he foresaw a SDP-Centre-Green coalition on the horizon.
 No matter who wins the election, Korpinen noted that the next government will have a difficult go of it, as the economy is predicted to slow down and there are  still tough decisions on several reforms  that have to be made.
 Still undecided? Watch or listen to our Yle News election debate in English!
 If you missed the live broadcast of the Yle News election debate, you can still catch the programme  on our website , on  Yle Areena  and  our Facebook page . The debate is also available as a  podcast .
 If you have any questions, or would like to share something on your mind, just contact us via WhatsApp on +358 44 421 0909, on our Facebook or Twitter account, or at yle.news@yle.fi.
 The All Points North podcast is a weekly look at what's going on in Finland. Subscribe via  iTunes  (and leave a review!), listen  on Spotify  and  Yle Areena  or find it on your favourite podcatching app or via our  RSS feed .
 This final podcast episode of our political party profile series ahead of the 14 April election was presented by  Denise Wall  and  Mark B. Odom , with additional reporting by  Zena Iovino .The producer was  Pamela Kaskinen  and the sound engineer was  Juha Sarkkinen .
 Don't forget to follow the election results on Sunday at our  Yle News website , and tune in again next week Wednesday for our special wrap-up podcast where Sam and Sini will join us one last time for an analysis of the results.


Government parties took a drubbing in Finland’s parliamentary election on Sunday as Prime Minister  Juha Sipilä ’s Centre Party polled its lowest general election result ever with just 13.8 percent of the vote to lose 13 seats with all votes counted, while hard-right populist Finns Party came second with 39 seats, just one behind the Social Democrats' 40.
 Election result 2019 With 100% of vote counted: SDP 40 seats FP 39 NCP 38 CEN 31 GREENS 20 LEFT 16 SPP 9 CD 5 BLUE 0 OTHERS 2
 Coalition partner Blue Reform was obliterated, getting just one percent of the vote and no MPs, while the third government partner the National Coalition Party emerged from four years in power relatively unscathed to gain one seat and finish on 38 seats.
 Sipilä, a former businessman, had promised to bring the efficiency of the private sector to government as prime minister. However his administration’s austerity policies and labour market experiments such as a contentious so-called activation model ruffled many feathers. Reacting to the results on Sunday, Sipilä said that the party was the evening’s biggest loser. "We are the biggest loser and that must be acknowledged. The people have spoken," he added.
 An upstart in the race according to media polls, the Finns Party made good on pre-election polling and staged a strong finish with 17.5 percent of the vote. Immigration hardliner and party chair  Jussi Halla-aho  had previously had said he wanted to take the party into the next government.
 "We have made it very clear to everybody that we are open to cooperation with everyone but not at any cost," Halla-aho said. "We could not join a government which is not committed to reducing harmful immigration to Finland," he added.
 Halla-aho a big vote puller
 Halla-aho scored a double win for the Finns Party, as he emerged as the evening’s biggest vote magnet, attracting support from more than 30,000 voters.
 The centre-left Social Democratic Party managed a razor thin lead over its rivals, snapping up 17.7 percent of ballots cast, one of its poorest election outcomes ever. But that was enough for the Social Democrats to increase their parliamentary presence by six seats to 40, likely giving the party the mandate to initiate government formation talks.
 Party leader and former union boss  Antti Rinne  told Yle News that he is likely to focus on a few key issues in government. "I hope we can solve this unemployment situation we have in Finland nowadays. It’s pensions, students, and child families are not doing so well in Finland now," he noted.
 The NCP ended the evening with 17 percent voter support, just trailing the populist Finns Party. The SDP and the NCP have not always seen eye-to-eye, but party chair  Petteri Orpo  did not rule out both parties cooperating in government.
 "Of course it is possible if we find a common programme for the government. Our red lines are the economy. We want to keep public finances in balance and we want Finland to be an active member of the EU. And our main target is to get the unemployment rate to a Nordic level," Orpo told Yle News.
 The election was a hotly-contested race in which no single party was able to harvest 20 percent or more votes -- a situation that analysts described as unusual. The outcome reflects what pundits are calling an increasingly fragmented political landscape in Finland.
 "People are looking for options. They have not been satisfied and that’s why we have seen the growth of support for the Finns Party and the Greens," said political commentator  Sini Korpinen , a frequent contributor to Yle News’ All Points North podcast.
 "The age when three big parties take turns in government or in opposition are over. It’s time for politicians to figure out how to make things work," she added.
 2019 records: Early voting, women make gains
 This year a record number of people -- more than 1.5 million or 36.1 percent of the electorate -- opted to cast their ballots early during advance voting. Early voting activity increased by about four percent compared to the previous general election.
 The overall voter turnout was 72 percent, up from 70 percent in the last general election in 2015. Korpinen told Yle that the outcome reflects the highly polarised nature of the election. "It’s going to be very hard to negotiate a government, maybe the hardest ever. Anything can happen."
 The election has seated a record number of female MPs in the Finnish parliament. This year women will take up 92 positions as lawmakers, up from the previous record of 85 in 2011. In addition, this year saw more women than ever among the top vote-getters.
 One of Finland’s new vote magnets was NCP MP  Elina Lepomäki , whom punters see as a contender for party chair when party delegates meet to elect a new party leader in 2020.
 Overall, around 60 foreign-background candidates vied for seats in the election, according to Statistics Finland.
 Edit: Updated at 1.02am to reflect final result with all votes counted.


The independent daily  Helsingin Sanomat  notes how very tight  Sunday's parliamentary elections  were by pointing out that the winning margin enjoyed by the first-place Social Democratic Party was only some 6,800 votes ahead the second-ranked Finns Party.
 This win, writes HS, was in no way as big as what SDP Chair  Antti Rinne  had expected. The 17.7 percent of the vote polled is the second lowest in the parliamentary election history of the party. The only time it has fared worse was in the 2015 election.
 According to Helsingin Sanomat, it was "clear as day" that the SDP expected better results, and it predicts that Rinne will come in for criticism inside the party, and that his leadership will be challenged. Rinne himself said on Sunday that voters have "misunderstood" his party, but that is unlikely to work as an explanation.
 It was a matter of life and death for the SDP to come out on top in this election. Getting stuck behind the Finns Party would have been catastrophic for the SDP. The status as the nation's largest party was the minimum that the SDP was aiming for.
 Helsingin Sanomat says that upcoming government formation talks will be tough, but it is Rinne who will start leading those negotiations.
 No more big parties
 The Social Democratic Party newspaper  Demokraatti today writes  that it was a desire for change that won in these elections. This desire was channeled in two directions, with victories for the political left and for the Greens, but also for the populist Finns Party.
 Demokraatti goes on to say that if it is assumed in Finland that "major parties" poll at least 20 percent of the vote, then there are only mid-sized parties left in the country. Success in this election is being measured above all on two scales - a comparison with results in the previous election, and how results stack up against the other parties. In both respects, writes Demokraatti, the SDP was the most successful party.
 This paper says that the election results are so close and so exceptional that government formation talks will be complex. It points out that in a somewhat similar situation in the spring of 2011, negotiations on forming a new government took until Midsummer. Now, that is not really possible because of Finland's EU presidency, which begins on 1 July.
 Dark day for the Centre
 The Centre Party's  Suomenmaa  describes Sunday's loss as the gloomiest in the history of the traditionally rural-based party and predicts that it will generate a bitter internal debate on the reasons, and on the direction of the party must now take.
 Suomenmaa notes that since the Centre's main partner in the previous government, the conservative National Coalition Party (NCP), did not suffer the same kind of defeat, there is plenty to ponder.
 "Parliamentary elections have been held. The people have had their say, and their verdict on the Centre was especially harsh," writes Suomenmaa.
 It quotes former Centre Party leader and PM  Matti Vanhanen  as saying Sunday evening that one key reason may be that some of the most painful decisions taken by that government during the last election period did not affect NCP voters as much as they did Centre voters.
 Record number of women MPs
 The Greens-affiliated  Vihreä Lanka  points out that in addition to the very close finish at the top, another notable feature of Sunday's vote is the increase in the number of women elected to Parliament.
 As of early Monday morning, it looked as if Finland's new 200 member parliament will include 92 women MPs, a new record.
 Of the 20 Green candidates elected to parliament - or 21 if a recount in Lapland goes in favour of the Greens - only three are men.
 Vihreä Lanka also notes that all but six of the MPs in the Green's parliamentary group will be new faces. In addition, a new chair and new party secretary are to be elected at a party congress this coming summer.
 Whether this "renewed" Green League will be promoting its policies in the cabinet, or in opposition, is something that will be seen within the next few weeks, notes Vihreä Lanka.
 Familiar faces gone
 The Oulu-based  Kaleva  writes that many familiar faces will be missing from the ranks of MPs in the new parliament.
 The Blue Reform, which split from the Finns Party two years ago, failed to win a single seat in these elections. That means that four cabinet ministers in the last government,  Sampo Terho ,  Pirkko Mattila ,  Jari Lindström  and  Jussi Niinistö , will be looking for new jobs. Foreign Minister  Timo Soini , also of the Blue Reform, did not stand for reelection.
 Veteran politician  Paavo Väyrynen  failed to regain a seat as a candidate of his recently formed Seven Star Movement. A former Centre Party leader, government minister, MEP, and presidential candidate, Väyrynen has been a fixture on the political scene since first being elected to parliament in 1970.
 Nationalism here to stay
 Finnish politics are now in uncharted waters, according to the newsstand tabloid  Iltalehti .
 In an editorial column, the paper's editor-in-chief  Erja Yläjärvi  writes that politics have entered a completely new age in which not one of the winners can forecast what will happen next. One sure thing is that the time of the three big parties is over.
 In practice, the entire political opposition, the SDP, the Finns Party, the Greens and the Left Alliance, all marched to victory.
 On the implications of the strong showing by the populist Finns Party, Yläjärvi wrote, "Finland is now clearly one of the numerous European countries where in election after election, anti-immigration sentiment and nationalism are permanently important values".
 She adds that the pundits can forget the traditional coalitions of the past. Finland no longer lives in the old world where three big parties shared out power with junior partners. The situation is new, something that will make the weeks ahead as unpredictable as Sunday's elections were.


Following Sunday's hard-fought election, Finland's 200-seat legislature will feature 83 new MPs – some of whom aren't so new after all.
 Ari Koponen , who runs a charity service under the name "Brother Christmas," was elected on the nationalist Finns Party from the Uusimaa electoral district, which includes Helsinki's surrounding municipalities. In early April, Koponen was charged with  violating fundraising laws .
 Among the MPs chosen in the Savo-Karelia electoral district is  Marko Kilpi  of the conservative National Coalition Party (NCP), who is best known as the author of eight books, mostly crime fiction. He is also a Kuopio police officer who appeared in a popular police TV show and has made documentary films.
 As seen on TV
 Another well-known media figure,  Pirkka-Pekka Petelius , was elected on the Greens ticket in Uusimaa. He has appeared in Yle comedy and nature programmes as well as dozens films – including one based on a Marko Kilpi novel – and as a voice actor in the Finnish version of  The Lion King .
 Another new Greens MP is the party's deputy chair,  Maria Ohisalo , from Helsinki. She  served as the party's acting chair  after party leader Touko Aalto stepped due to health issues last autumn.
 She's joined by the youngest member of the new legislature, fellow Green  Iiris Suomela , 24, was ushered into parliament by voters in the Pirkanmaa district, which includes the city of Tampere. Pirkanmaa Greens voters also returned city councillor and government climate advisor  Oras Tynkkynen  to parliament, where he previously served from 2004 to 2015.
 New Finns Party MPs include party secretary  Riikka Slunga-Poutsalo  from Uusimaa and the former chair of the party's youth wing,  Sebastian Tynkkynen , from the Oulu district. The latter, a former reality TV show star, has made headlines due to a  hate speech conviction  and being  expelled by his church  due to his open bisexuality.
 Like father, like daughter
 Other MPs making comebacks include  former transport minister   Merja Kyllönen  of the Left Alliance, who was sent back to parliament by Oulu region voters after a stint in the European Parliament.
 Three former Social Democratic Party representatives return to the legislature after years off: Olympic silver medallist wrestler  Marko Asell  from Pirkanmaa, former justice minister  Johannes Koskinen  from the Häme district, and Uusimaa author and academic  Kimmo Kiljunen , recently in the headlines as mastermind of the  ill-fated Hamina Flag Park .
 A new generation is literally stepping into the legislature, as Centre Party veteran  Timo Kalli 's daughter  Eeva Kalli  was elected from south-west Finland while former SDP finance minister  Eero Heinäluoma 's daughter  Eveliina Heinäluoma  won a seat from Helsinki. Another former minister,  Ole Norrback  of the Swedish People's Party, saw his son  Anders Norrback  elected by Vaasa voters. All three carry on their fathers' party lines.
 Electoral districts are to certify their results by 6pm Tuesday. MPs are to present their credentials and form parliamentary groups on 23 April. The following day, MPs elect new speakers ahead of the formal opening of the four-year legislative term on 25 April.


Election officials in the electoral district of Satakunta in western Finland confirmed on Monday that  Antti Rinne ’s SDP won three seats in the Satakunta district by razor thin margins
 The recount followed  Sunday's general election  in which the SDP came away with 40 parliamentary seats, barely squeaking past the populist Finns Party, which finished the night with 39 seats. The results of Sunday's election is scheduled to be confirmed by the Justice Ministry on Wednesday.
 If just additional 100 votes were to be awarded to  Juha Sipilä ’s Centre Party in the recount, it could have won an additional seat in the district and the SDP’s elected MPs in the region would have fallen to two.
 Losing one seat would have meant that the Finns Party and the SDP would have drawn level with 39 seats each overall, although the centre-left party garnered a slightly larger share of the vote than the populists. The Centre meanwhile, would have seen its parliamentary seat count rise to 32. That outcome could have upended the calculus  with regard to government formation talks .
 Lapland district also closely contested
 Chair of the electoral district,  Vappu Laukkanen  said that it is very rare for recounts to yield any major surprises. She noted that they generally involve a few votes that have either been miscounted due to negligence, or assigned to the wrong candidate.
 Justice Ministry election director,  Arto Jääskeläinen , said that it is extremely uncommon for seats to be re-assigned from one party to another following a recount. However he noted that it is more likely for the votes counted in favour of different candidates from the same party to change.
 In addition to Satakunta, the situation in the Lapland electoral district was also close. In that case the Greens needed fewer than ten additional votes to sweep one seat from the Centre Party. Based on Sunday night’s results, the Centre Party won three seats in Lapland, followed by the Finns Party, the National Coalition Party, the Social Democratic Party and the Left Alliance, all with one seat each.
 The election saw government parties with the exception of the National Coalition Party  suffer heavy losses , while opposition parties gained additional seats or hold their ground in the parliament..
 Edit: Updated at 7.36pm to reflect that the recount confirmed the original result.


Aamulehti is among the papers that Tuesday carried a  syndicated Lännen Media analysis  of the prospects for upcoming government formation talks.
 According to this article, climate issues and taxation may be the main stumbling blocks in finding a smooth path for the creation of a working coalition.
 As the head of  the party that came in first place in Sunday's voting , SDP chairman  Antti Rinne  will be sending out a list of questions to other parties on policy issues on the 26th of this month.
 The paper says that it is clear that some of the questions will concern climate change. It will be difficult to find a fit between the ambitious climate programme promoted by the SDP and comments by Finns Party representatives about "over-ambitious" climate targets. This could well be one reason that the SDP will not invite the Finns Party into a coalition.
 As for taxation, the SDP and conservative NCP are far apart, Aamulehti notes. Demands by Rinne for a return to centralised labour agreements could also put the two parties on a collision course.
 The day after the election, the SDP leader stated that his immediate feeling was that the Left Alliance and the Greens would make for more natural allies in government.
 As the paper points out, these are also the three parties that made the biggest gains in Sunday's vote.
 The Centre Party has not declared itself out of the running for a place in a new cabinet. However, according to this paper, following its massive losses at the polls, the Centre has a lot of dirty laundry to wash before it will be fit to join in a coalition. The SDP and the Centre Party, though still have major differences, especially over Prime Minister  Juha Sipilä' s economic and employment policies.
 Regardless of what constellation of parties ends up in the cabinet, according to this analysis, in practice the Greens are all but certain to be a part of it. If so, it is likely that the Green chair,  Pekka Haavisto  will have the foreign affairs portfolio.
 EU election impact
 Turku's  Turun Sanomat  points out that the campaign for elections to the European Parliament will be underway at the same time as government formation talks are going on. It quotes Finns Party leader  Jussi Halla-aho  as saying that this could have an effect on the negotiations.
 Halla-aho pointed out that the various parties have to emphasise their differences in an election campaign, something that is not necessarily harmonious with the process of forming a new government.
 Political parties will be formally filing lists of candidates for the EU parliamentary elections on Thursday of this week.
 Channel surfing
 The Kuopio-based  Savon Sanomat  carries a Finnish News Agency STT report that over half the nation's population tuned into Yle television coverage of the elections on Sunday evening.
 Altogether 2.7 million viewers watched Yle's election reporting with a peak of almost 1.6 million between 9:30 PM and 9:44 PM.
 They were not all, however, glued to coverage, but bounced back and forth between TV1 and TV2 which was carrying the finals of the  Women's World Ice Hockey Championships , a broadcast that drew some 2.4 million pairs of eyes.
 Danger of measles growing
 Finland's largest circulation daily,  Helsingin Sanomat , Tuesday warned that the dangers posed by measles  could be growing in Finland again.
 The paper points to the latest figures from the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) showing that the number of cases of measles has risen this year, especially in France, Poland, the Czech Republic, Belgium, Bulgaria and Ireland.
 According to Helsingin Sanomat, the spread of measles in Finland could rise as well, as the overwhelming majority of cases last year and this year were infections picked up in other parts of Europe.
 Last year there were 15 cases of measles identified in Finland. So far this year, there have been six. Last year three of those originated in Asia, the rest in Europe, both from EU countries and other nearby areas.
 The paper says that this may have influenced the rise registered in the number of inoculations against measles. According to figures released by Finland's National Institute for Health and Welfare in February, 96.1 percent of children born in 2016 had received inoculations providing immunity against the measles. During the years 2014 and 2015, that figure was 94.9 percent.
 Notre Dame fire
 The blaze which heavily damaged Paris' Cathedral of Notre Dame Monday night was front-page news in almost every Finnish newspaper on Tuesday morning.
 As reported by most papers, including  Iltalehti , among the outpouring of sympathy from world leaders was a tweet by Finland's President  Sauli Niinistö  addressed to his French counterpart Emmanuel Macron.
 Screen capture of tweet by President Sauli Niinistö. Yle
 Writing in French, President Niinistö said, "Finland shares the sadness in the face of this terrible fire at Notre Dame Cathedral. Our thoughts are with France and Parisians tonight."


National Coalition Party chair  Petteri Orpo  emerged from a party leadership meeting on Tuesday to carefully signal his party's readiness to join  government formation talks  following Sunday’s parliamentary election.
 Orpo said at a news conference Tuesday that there may be room to manoeuvre in some areas and noted that according to tradition, the position of Speaker of Parliament goes to the party that captured the second-highest proportion of votes, in this case, the Finns Party.
 The NCP  came away from the election with 38 parliamentary seats , just behind the populist Finns Party’s 39 and the Social Democratic Party’s 40 seats.
 NCP not the "bad cop"
 Orpo told journalists that he believed that it would be possible to agree on a government programme with SDP chair  Antti Rinne , adding that he was distancing himself from the concept of "red lines" that cannot be compromised. He noted that the larger the government’s majority the stronger its parliamentary base would be.
 "I am distancing myself from that term. Responsible economic and employment policies are among the important issues for the NCP. However the NCP isn’t hankering after joining the government. It all depends on the policy programme," he noted.
 "We will not join the government at any cost. It is possible for the NCP to participate in the work of government if we can create a shared and realistic picture of the state of the national economy. And agree on what kind of change the government wants to effect in Finland," he added.
 However he stressed that his party would not be the "bad cop" in government that always says "no".
 Commenting on the possibility of the Finns Party joining the governing coalition, Orpo said that the nationalist party’s election surge should be taken seriously. "The NCP respects the election result," he remarked.


Finland's  parliamentary election  on Sunday has been touted by some as a victory for "red-green" female candidates. Red-green parties include the Social Democrats, Left Alliance and Greens.
 A total of 92 women were elected to national office in Finland this year - nine of them for the first time - making the country's incoming 200-member parliament 46 percent female.
 Depending on the source, Finland is generally ranked tenth in the world regarding lawmakers' gender balance, and this election helped to improve gender equality in Finnish national politics.
 Now, Finland trails just behind Sweden (by a tenth of a percentage point), a country which also recently saw an increase in females elected to parliament.
 Veteran MP  Janina Andersson  was just 24-years-old when she first won a seat in parliament in the mid-90s, says she was unsure of on-the-job etiquette at first. But she quickly learned the rules after making headlines for breastfeeding her child at Parliament House.
 "In 1995 there was no room for babies in politics, but quite quickly the female Speaker of Parliament made arrangements for female MPs with a baby care room for mothers with children. It was a psychological win for me that something so wrong became completely acceptable," she said.
 Out of the Greens' 20 incoming representatives, 17 are women, a situation that Andersson doesn't consider balanced.
 "I think there should be an even representation of ages and genders. When it comes to age [demographics] I think it looks very good, but within the Greens the gender split is rather lopsided and that's not good, either," Andersson.
 Fewer new young MPs, but average age dropped slightly
 The average age of Finland's next parliament dropped by a year, but at the same time the number of young MPs actually fell.
 Out of the 200 available seats they were vying for, only eight candidates under the age of 30 managed to get elected in Sunday's general election.
 The average age of incoming MPs is 46, while the average age of parliamentarians elected in the 2015 parliamentary election was 47.3.
 However, the age decrease was not prompted by a slew of millennial 20-somethings being elected - the number of incoming MPs under the age of 30 - eight of them -actually declined this year.
 In 2015 there were 14 MPs under 30 who were elected and in 2011 there were 11.
 The youngest incoming female MP this year will be the Greens' 24-year-old I iris Suomela .


Green Party chair  Pekka Haavisto  has said that he would like to see his party join the incoming government, but noted that issues like education, climate and measures against social marginalisation need to be emphasised if it does.
 "It is very important that the government is positive toward EU development," he added.
 On Tuesday Haavisto said he would not yet speculate on the various coalition-building possibilities that may take shape over the coming days.
 He said other matters - particularly the potential size of government's majority - need to be examined, for example whether it is even feasible to form a government with support from fewer than 110 MPs.
 After that's sorted out, Haavisto said, it will be time to begin considering government programmes.
 Finns Party cooperation?
 Haavisto was diplomatic about whether the Greens would join a government with the populist Finns Party, suggesting he thinks the two parties would not likely join forces.
 "In that scenario, one side will need to change, and it's not the Greens," he said.
 Haavisto also said the work load of coalition building may be lightened by the Centre Party's change in leadership. On Tuesday outgoing Prime Minister  Juha Sipilä   announced he was leaving  his Centre Party chair post in September.
 Haavisto thanked Sipilä for cooperation in efforts that both parties worked on, specifically noting their work regarding climate policy.
 The Greens leader said he believes a government will be formed by the end of next month.
 EU elections loom
 Finland's EU Presidency period begins on 1 July, a situation that will likely help along the process of government formation in good time, he said, saying that Finland cannot afford to have freshly-minted ministers when it assumes the presidency.
 Sunday's elections brought five more Greens into parliament, for a total of 20.
 "It is an interesting new group of three men and 17 women. Of the members, 14 are new and their range of ages is large," he said.
 He said last Sunday's good results for the Greens' female candidates will likely carry over to the party's leadership elections next month, and suggested that the party's next chair would likely be a woman.
 Haavisto reiterated that he still has no plans to run for the chair post himself, which the party will elect this summer. He  took over the job last autumn  after the party's previous chair  Touko Aalto  stepped down for health reasons.
 Edited at 7:52 pm 16 April 2019 to reflect that Haavisto said he thinks his party's next chair will be a woman.


Former Finns Party members who defected to other parties in 2017 did not fare well in Sunday's parliamentary elections,  writes tabloid Iltalehti .
 A group of defectors founded the Blue Reform group in summer 2017 to distance themselves from hard-right Finns Party chair  Jussi Halla-aho . Their efforts were in vain, however, as nobody from Blue Reform managed to secure a seat in parliament on Sunday.
 While some MPs such as  Veera Ruoho  jumped straight to the conservative National Coalition Party (NCP), long-term politician  Kaj Turunen  went a different route, as IL notes: he first defected from the Finns Party to Blue Reform (then called "New Alternative"), from whence he defected once more to the NCP, only to be ejected from parliament altogether.
 Turunen's support figures fell substantially since the previous parliamentary elections. In 2015 he received 6,929 votes, but on Sunday only 545 people voted for him.
 Ruoho said in IL that while she is grateful for the support she did receive (1,487 votes, more than a thousand fewer than in 2015) her time in the legislature was overshadowed by a harassment case. In 2017 Finns Party MP  Teuvo Hakkarainen  was  convicted of assault and sexual harassment  against Ruoho and ordered to pay 80 day fines. Ruoho received hate mail after the incident, Iltalehti writes.
 Ruoho said she will return to her profession as a police officer, calling her low support numbers "a blessing for my family".
 Rehabilitation, parental benefits to change
 Meanwhile regional daily  Aamulehti reports  that Finnish national pension institution Kela will change the way rehabilitation allowances, parental allowances and sickness benefits are determined.
 Previously  Kela calculated  the sums based on each recipient's annual income from the full previous calendar year's tax returns. Starting in 2020, the amount of benefits will be based on the recipient's income from the previous 12 months preceding the benefit decision, even mid-year.
 Kela said this method would bring allowances more in line with people's actual income levels, AL writes.
 Thieves caught by hidden tracker
 Daily Helsingin Sanomat writes  that two men in Vantaa were found guilty of aggravated theft on Tuesday after they systematically stole electronics from postal shipments in 2015 and 2016.
 The men, born in 1983 and 1969 and working for an outside logistics company, got away with 60,000 euros in phones and tablets while working at the primary Posti hub, HS writes.
 The duo was caught after a GPS tracking device in one of the shipments raised the postal service's suspicions. HS reports that video surveillance footage of the men improperly loading packages for their own purposes finally landed both men one year's probation each.
 Both workers appealed to have their sentences commuted, but the Helsinki Court of Appeal found no reason to change the original ruling.


Populism has come to Finland to stay and the days of big-three political parties shaping the government or the opposition are over, say analysts  Sini Korpinen  and  Sam Kingsley  as All Points North wraps up its special parliamentary election series.
 The populist Finns Party led by immigration hardliner  Jussi Halla-aho , swept into the top three to claim 39 seats and push Finnish politics hard right, with a voter mandate that Korpinen and Kingsley say other politicians and the general public should not ignore. That groundswell of support is what will complicate the task of coalition talks for  Antti Rinne , whose Social Democratic party claimed 40 seats and the commission to form a new government from the fragmented result.
 According to the experts, although  Petteri Orpo 's National Coalition Party and  Juha Sipilä 's Centre Party -- which was soundly trounced in the poll -- are the only groups with any appetite for working with the Finns Party, sending them into opposition could ultimately lead more voters to rally to their side in subsequent elections.
 Overall, opposition parties the Greens and the Left Alliance look to be solid potential partners for the SDP, but their MPs may not be enough for a parliamentary majority. That means Rinne will likely have to invite other parties to join his administration, taking the new government in the direction of an unwieldy "rainbow coalition".
 Whatever happens, Finland can look forward to more thrills as coalition formation talks progress and a new government takes office just as Finland assumes the rotating EU presidency from 1 July.
 Back again after Easter with new content!
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 The All Points North podcast is a weekly look at what's going on in Finland. Subscribe via  iTunes  (and leave a review!), listen  on Spotify  and  Yle Areena  or find it on your favourite podcatching app or via our  RSS feed .
 Our landmark 50th podcast was presented by  Denise Wall  and  Mark B. Odom , with additional reporting by  Pamela Kaskinen  and  Tom Bateman . The producer was  Pamela Kaskinen  and the sound engineers were  Pasi Ilkka  and  Jami Auvinen .


Business magazine Talouselämä reports that government formation talks will begin next week with SDP chair  Antti Rinne  sending a questionnaire to political parties. The Social Democrats want to know the parties' stance on issues such as the economy, climate and energy policy.
 As the biggest party in the election, the SDP will take the lead on government formation talks, though it will face pressure as it only gained one more seat in the new legislature than the Finns Party and two more than the National Coalition Party, writes TE.
 Talouselämä predicts that the Social Democrats will partner with the National Coalition party, though the NCP is likely to stick firmly to its election programme, which could prove troublesome for the SDP.
 Yle News' podcast  All Points North  released an episode on Wednesday that examines how party negotiations might play out, and which parties might ascend to government in the coming weeks.
 Church losing appeal
 Ahead of the Easter holiday, national daily  Helsingin Sanomat  reports that the Finnish Evangelical Lutheran Church continues to  lose members . Around 52 percent of Helsinki residents now belong to the church, down from some 62 percent in 2010.
 Helsinki has seven parishes in which fewer than half of residents belong to the church. HS noted that many newcomers to Finland have no connection with the state church.
 Sakari Enrold , rector of Kannelmäki parish in Helsinki, said the downward trend was likely to continue, but that a "global catastrophe could encourage people to seek solace in churches."
 Leavers include people who find the church too conservative as well as those considering it  too liberal  on issues such as gender-neutral marriage.
 Multilingual kids enhance peer communication
 HS reports that some 20 percent of under school-age children in Helsinki speak a native language other than Finnish, Swedish or Sami.
 Families’ home languages, however, vary greatly by district. In Länsi-Pakila, northern Helsinki, Finland's domestic languages are the native tongue of 98 percent of kids, but the same is true for just 44 percent of children living in Kallahti in the east of the city.
 Helsinki estimates that by 2025, nearly a quarter of kids in daycare will speak a language other than Finnish or Swedish at home.
 Satu Koistinen , an educational expert with the city, said that polyglot immigrant-background kids are helping stave off the erosion of the Finnish language thanks to their linguistic agility which rubs off on their peers.


Finland's main political parties released their full lists of candidates for next month's European Parliament election. They include quite a few politicians who were just elected to the Finnish legislature this week. If elected to both bodies, they will have to pick one, leaving the other seat open to be filled by a runner-up deputy from their own party.
 The number of so-called 'double candidates' indicates that the parties have had difficulties attracting enough candidates for the back-to-back elections, says University of Helsinki political science researcher  Antti Ronkainen .
 Kerfuffle at Finns Party press event
 Thursday was the deadline for Europarliamentary candidates to announce their intentions. One of the biggest remaining question marks was whether outgoing foreign minister  Timo Soini  would seek a seat in Strasbourg and Brussels.
 Soini co-founded the nationalist Finns Party, the second largest bloc in the new Finnish Parliament, but left the party two years to join the breakaway Blue Reform party – which did not win a single seat in last weekend's election. The party has vowed to press ahead anyway, but suffered a blow as Soini announced in a Thursday blog post that he is leaving politics.
 Three other former Blues ministers,  Sampo Terho ,  Jari Lindström  and  Jussi Niinistö , have also said they will not run, while two former Blues MPs,  Ari Jalonen  and  Kari Kulmala , will seek European seats along with seven other candidates.
 The Finns Party revealed its roster of candidates, headed by deputy chair and MP  Laura Huhtasaari . The rest of the list includes current MEP  Pirkko Ruohonen-Lerner ,two newly-elected MPs convicted of hate speech,  Teuvo Hakkarainen  and  Sebastian Tynkkynen , as well as  Mika Raatikainen , who just lost his seat in the Finnish Parliament after one term. He originally got that seat by replacing party chair  Jussi Halla-aho , another convicted hate speech offender, when the latter opted to join the European Parliament in 2014.
 At a press conference announcing the party's candidates on Thursday, a  Helsingin Sanomat  reporter asked Halla-aho about the old blog posts that earned him that conviction. Social Democratic Party chair  Antti Rinne , who is beginning efforts to form a new government, cited the anti-immigrant posts twice this week as a potential obstacle to government cooperation between the SDP and the Finns Party. Halla-aho, however, refused to answer the journalist's question, ordering a staffer to take the microphone away from him and moving on to the next question.
 Veteran politicians and young hopefuls
 Leading the Social Democratic list are incumbent MEP  Miapetra Kumpula-Natri , former finance minister  Eero Heinäluoma , along with former MP  Satu Taavitsainen , Helsinki city councillor ' Husu' Hussein  and SDP youth wing chair and Rovaniemi city councillor  Mikkel Näkkäläjärvi .
 Candidates from outgoing prime minister  Juha Sipilä 's Centre Party include  Mauri Pekkarinen  and  Pekka Puska , who have both just left Parliament, current MEPs  Elsi Katainen  and  Mirja Vehkaperä , as well as  Jouni Kemppainen , editor in chief of the rural newspaper Maaseudun Tulevaisuus and former news chief at Yle.
 The best-known Christian Democratic Party candidate is party chair, MP and former world-champion race walker  Sari Essayah . Others include MP  Peter Östman  and party secretary  Asmo Maanselkä .
 Essayah says that if she is elected to the European Parliament, she will return as an MEP during Finland's EU Presidency term in the second half of this year and then switch back to the Helsinki legislature. However if the small party is included in the next government coalition and she is offered a ministerial portfolio, she would then give up her MEP seat.
 The conservative National Coalition Party (NCP) announced its candidates earlier. Among them: present MEPs  Sirpa Pietikäinen ,  Petri Sarvamaa  and  Henna Virkkunen , as well as another former government minister,  Kimmo Sasi  and ex-MEP  Eija-Riitta Korhola .
 The main Green candidates are  MEP Heidi Hautala  and former environment minister  Ville Niinistö . Among the others is  Iiris Suomela , who was just elected as Finland's youngest MP.
 On the Left Alliance candidate list are  Hanna Sarkkinen , newly re-elected as an MP, and  Silvia Modig , who this week lost her seat in Helsinki, as well as current MEP and ex-transport minister  Merja Kyllönen . She too is a newly-elected MP who says she does not intend to return to Brussels even if she wins – apparently aiming to gather votes for the party to help fellow candidates vying for an EU seat.
 Meanwhile the small Swedish People's Party's best-known candidate is MEP and former presidential candidate and journalist  Nils Torvalds .
 14th candidate may hang in limbo pending Brexit
 The European Parliament election is held in all EU member states between 23-26 May, in Finland on Sunday 26 May. Advance voting is available for  European citizens in Finland  15-21 May and for Finns abroad 15-18 May. Finns abroad may also now vote by mail-in absentee ballot.
 As it now appears that Britain will take part in the European election, Finns will elect 13 MEPs as before. However if the UK does eventually leave the EU, the candidate with the 14th-highest vote tally would then take Finland's new 14th seat in Brussels and Strasbourg. However it could take many months before the eventual size of the Finnish delegation is finalised.
 The European Parliament now has 751 MEPs with 73 from Britain. If the UK leaves the union, 27 of its seats will be distributed to other countries and 46 left empty. Finland was among those arguing that the extra seats should not be distributed, but that the legislature should simply be shrunk in size in the event of Brexit.


Prime Minister  Juha Sipilä 's Centre Party suffered a  historic defeat at the polls on 14 April  and its loss of 18 seats means it will also lose more than 2.6 million euros in political party funding from the state.
 Since 1967, the Finnish government has paid about 30 million euros annually – close to 150,000 euros per MP – to support the activities of Finland's parliamentary political parties. Half of the money awarded by the state each year is meant to support the party in general, and the other half is intended for use in the party's information and communication work.
 Because this support is distributed according to the number of parliamentary seats each party holds, the Centre Party will lose upwards of 2.6 million euros in funding, a loss that party secretary  Riikka Pirkkalainen  says will likely lead to restructuring.
 "This means we will have to adapt, and of course, it feels bad," she said.
 Pirkkalainen said she can't say yet whether the loss will lead to a reduction in the number of personnel in its party offices or district organisations.
 "Party leaders will make the final decision about any changes to the budget and where possible adjustments can be made," she said.
 The Centre Party will take a hard hit when it loses some of its government support, but it will not lead to an economic crisis, as the party's finances are now in order.
 "After the 2011 election, the Centre Party was in much worse financial shape and had outstanding debt. During Juha Sipilä's term as chair, the party's finances were straightened out and so the situation is now better than it was before," Pirkkalainen said.
 Gains for parties winning new seats
 The Social Democratic Party (SDP) won 40 seats in the election, an increase that will translate into a 900,000-euro injection of more annual state support moving forward. This boost will bring state-funded support for the SDP up to around six million euros per year.
 Back in 2015, when the shoe was on the other foot and the SDP had its worst election result ever, it had to respond to the cut in funding by limiting the publication rate of its party bulletin, among other things.
 The Left Alliance won four more parliamentary seats, which means 600,000 more euros in yearly support, bringing their annual sum to almost 2.4 million euros.
 Success at the polls will also provide a welcome shot of support for the Green Party. With five new seats, they will receive 740,000 euros more each year in state funding, a 33 percent increase on their previous state funding amount.
 Green party secretary  Lasse Miettinen  says the boost is important because the Greens do not have large individual donors such as foundations. Finland's Greens have traditionally had to rely on donations from private donors to meet their expenses, in addition to annual state funding.
 Miettinen said the party hasn't decided yet on how to use its new resources, and expected that the next few months would be spent considering it.
 "But I can say at this point that all of the money will be directed towards changing the world – in other words, taking us in the direction that our voters are hoping for," he said.
 Only slight improvement for Finns Party and NCP
 The Finns Party, with its third consecutive strong election showing, will receive only slightly more support from the state, as it picked up only one more parliamentary seat in the general election. Even so, its 39-seat total means it collects over 5.7 million euros in state support each year.
 Likewise, the National Coalition Party's one additional seat puts its annual support at slightly more than 5.5 million euros.
 The figures used to calculate the state funding changes in this report are from last year's government budget estimate. However, the final allocations may differ, as the new government coalition will determine the amount of annual support once it assumes office.


Finns Party communications chair  Jussi Halla-aho  did not respond to a question about an old blog post for which he was convicted for religious defamation and ethnic agitation -- instead calling on communications chief  Matti Putkonen  to remove the microphone from the journalist posing the question.
 The incident occurred during a party press conference on Thursday when Helsingin Sanomat reporter  Jarno Hartikainen  asked Halla-aho to comment on the blog writings, for which  Halla-aho was fined by Finland’s Supreme Court  in 2012.
 He asked the party chair whether the texts were the rash comments of an angry young man, and which do not reflect his opinions, or if he still stands by his comments. Hartikainen placed his question in the context of the party leader’s old writings "appearing to complicate [government] negotiations".
 The HS journalist was referring to Social Democratic Party chair  Antti Rinne , who said following his narrow election victory last Sunday that he and Halla-aho had "differences of opinion related to humanity". On Monday, Rinne referenced Halla-aho’s writings once more in an interview with commercial broadcaster MTV, citing them as evidence of fundamental differences.
 The Finns Party  emerged from the nail-biting election with 39 seats , just behind the SDP's 40 seats and ahead of the National Coalition Party's 38, making the nationalist party a strong contender to be part of a government coalition.
 Journalist told to hand over mic
 During the press conference, Halla-aho began to respond to the question, saying that "It’s rather difficult to take the excerpt out of its context..." At this point, Hartikainen interrupted and offered to provide an excerpt on which Halla-aho could comment. However at this stage the event took a turn for the dramatic.
 "No, no no," Halla-aho said, raising his voice, before calling on Putkonen to take the microphone away from the journalist. Putkonen complied and told Hartikainen to hand over the microphone.
 "Enough of this. You posed your question, Halla-aho will answer and you will pass on the microphone," Putkonen instructed the journalist.
 "You must comply with the rules here. We are not getting into these issues here," Halla-aho joined in.
 However Halla-aho did not respond to Hartikainen’s question and the hosts moved on to take other questions.
 In 2012, the Supreme Court ordered Halla-aho to pay a 50-day fine instead of a 30-day fine imposed by a lower court over the controversial blog post that he originally published in 2008. The Supreme Court said Halla-aho’s posts, which likened Islam to paedophilia and said Somalis are predisposed to stealing and living off welfare, qualified as inciting hatred against an ethnic group.
 In its ruling, the court said hate speech does not fall under the protection afforded by freedom of speech. The court also ordered Halla-aho to remove the comments from the blog. Two lower courts had previously dismissed the hate speech charges and convicted the defendant of religious defamation.


Fledgling politician  Hussein al-Taee , who was recently elected to  parliament on a Social Democratic Party ticket , has come under intense scrutiny over old Facebook posts about the situation in the Middle East.
 Among other things, the new MP from Vantaa appeared to compare Israel to the extremist group Isis and to endorse content posted by  a pro-Russia advocate who was sanctioned by Ukraine  over his apparent support for the illegal annexation of Crimea, according to reports last Thursday by STT news agency.
 Al-Taee has not disputed the veracity of his comments in the open Facebook group in which they were posted.
 "I want to apologise for comparing Israel to Isis, because the comment was simply stupid and it does not in any way represent my opinions or values," al-Taee told STT.
 SDP party secretary  Antton Rönnholm  told STT that the party plans to discuss the matter with al-Taee after the Easter break. Rönnholm added that it is important for the SDP that the newly-minted lawmaker has apologised for his writings.
 Al-Taee received 4,000 votes in recently-concluded parliamentary elections, enough to gain a seat in the Uusimaa district. During his campaign, he said he was a conflict resolution professional and that he had often spoken at the parliament and at ministries in a professional capacity.
 Employer stands behind al-Taee
 Meanwhile, al-Taee has the backing of his employer,  Martti Ahtisaari ’s Crisis Management Initiative, an independent organisation that acts as a peace broker in global hotspots.
 Communications and fundraising director  Elina Lehtinen  told STT that the new MP’s work for the organisation had been impeccable and very successful. Lehtinen said that it was enough for CMI that al-Taee had apologised for any offence his comments may have caused. She added that she had discussed the matter with al-Taee himself, but had not reviewed the contentious comments in any detail.
 "We have not gone through the comments in detail. It must be noted that the majority of the [public] comments are ones that he does not recognise as his own. There are clearly some elements that are deliberately being used to sabotage him," she remarked, declining to speculate who might want to harm al-Taee.
 "In Iraq al-Taee has inspired confidence among parties to the conflict and has brought together representatives of three groups: Shiias, Sunnis and Kurds. There is nothing to suggest that his work has been in any way unethical," she declared.
 Lehtinen pointed out that no one works alone at CMI and that all projects are supervised by the organisation itself as well as donors. "Conflict resolution is always [about] teamwork. Our credibility does not lie in the hands of one person."
 Lehtinen noted that given his new role as a member of parliament, al-Taee’s work at CMI will be on hold for the next four years. "At the moment he has chosen this path and he will be an MP for the next four years. I don’t believe that he will be actively involved in any CMI projects," she commented.
 Facebook group run by pro-Russia actor
 One of al-Taee’s posts dates back to 2014, when he had already begun working at Ahtisaari’s Crisis Management Initiative. At the time, he addressed Sweden’s intention to recognise Palestine as an independent state.
 "The countdown will now begin, we’ll see how the Swedish government will change and Stockholm or Malmö will really start to explode. The Mossad [Israeli intelligence service] will never forgive Sweden for this," he wrote.
 Al-Taee also repeatedly compared Israel’s actions to that of the extremist group Isis, according to STT. The group’s administrator and owner is  Janus Putkonen , who previously worked as editor of Verkkomedia.org, a website that described itself as a challenger of the mainstream media. The site offered Russia-friendly content as well as anti-vaxxer articles and was very critical of the USA and Israel.
 STT reported that Al-Taee commented frequently on Putkonen’s posts and links to Verkkomedia content without challenging the reliability of its sources. "I’m not quite sure that I know even now who Janus Putkonen is, but I do not endorse his ideas. I think his worldview is quite distasteful and problematic. When I began to see the Russia-friendly slant, I didn’t get involved and I quit the group," al-Taee told STT last Thursday.
 In March,  Ukraine placed Putkonen on a sanctions list  for his role as an election observer in Russia-backed elections in the so-called Donetsk People’s Republic in eastern Ukraine. He was also a press centre chief in the region.


Chair of the nationalist Finns Party  Jussi Halla-aho  has not entirely distanced himself from old blog posts that resulted in his conviction on hate speech charges. Last week Halla-aho  did not answer questions from a Helsingin Sanomat reporter  who tried to ask whether or not the head of the populist party still stood by his writings.
 The reporter was ordered to hand over the microphone during the party press conference and his questions were not addressed. Halla-aho took to his blog on Saturday to address the issue.
 "Some were foolish and imprudent comments. Some were the kinds of comments that you can make as a regular citizen but not as a politician. And others were the kind that taken out of context sound wild, but which had and still have a point," Halla-aho commented of the now-decade-old texts.
 Halla-aho "tired of having to respond" to posts
 Last week daily Helsingin Sanomat revisited those writings, which at the time resulted in a conviction for religious defamation and ethnic agitation and saw  the Supreme Court stiffen a lower court penalty  from a 30-day to a 50-day fine for the offences. The Supreme Court ruled that Halla-aho’s posts, which likened Islam to paedophilia and said Somalis are predisposed to stealing and living off welfare, qualified as inciting hatred against an ethnic group.
 The party chair also used his blog to address the incident last Thursday, in which he called for HS journalist  Jarno Hartikainen  to hand over the microphone when he tried to ask Halla-aho about his position on the old posts.
 The party leader said that the press conference, which had been organised to deal with upcoming European parliament elections, should not be used to go through his blogs in detail.
 "The alternative was to take the microphone away from the reporter and give to another who had something to ask about the day’s theme."
 Halla-aho said that he was tired of always having to respond to his written opinions during elections, when according to him, people "rediscover" his blog, titled  Scripta .
 "The fact that following any election, reporters attack the same phrases is a ritual and a compulsory move, nothing more," he wrote.


Juha Sipilä intends to serve as a backbench MP, after resigning the Centre Party leadership following a disappointing showing in  elections on 14 April .
 The Centre lost 18 of the 49 seats it held prior to the election, getting just 13.8 percent of the vote.
 “[Elections] are fought using the party chairs’ faces, and of course I accept the biggest responsibility for the Centre Party’s loss,” Sipilä told journalists on Tuesday as he returned to work after the Easter holiday.
 Sipilä also told media that the party was unlikely to enter government after such a heavy loss, but fellow Centre MP Antti Kaikkonen left the door ajar, saying the door into government was not ‘categorically’ closed. A party congress in the autumn will elect a new leader.
 Coalition formation is the next task for Finland’s newly-minted legislators, with SDP leader Antti Rinne in the driving seat after his party took 40 seats on 17.7 percent of the vote.
 Swedish People’s Party chair Anna-Maja Henriksson said she had spoken to Rinne over the weekend, but wasn’t expecting to start any official negotiations today. Other party leaders said they'd talked to Rinne but remained tight-lipped on the details.
 Finns Party MPs elected Ville Tavio, a second-term MP from south-west Finland, as chair of the parliamentary group. He got 21 votes while Leena Meri, who held the position last term, got 18.
 MPs presented their credentials on Tuesday, with the official opening of parliament set to take place on 25 April.


Conflict resolution organisation the Crisis Management Initiative (CMI) has removed mention of former employee Social Democrat MP  Hussein al-Taee  from its website, according to a report in political news publication Verkkouutiset. Al-Taee has also removed references to CMI from his Twitter profile.
 CMI was founded by Nobel laureate and former Finnish President  Martti Ahtisaari  in 2000 and al-Taee became a newly-elected MP in Finland's recent general election.
 CMI's and Al-Taee's deletions appear to have taken place shortly after a Jerusalem Post article headlined   ”Finnish MP under fire for comparing Israel to Isis”  was published on Sunday.
 In the article,  Dr Efraim Zuroff , the head of the Jerusalem office of the Simon Wiesenthal Centre, told the Jerusalem Post that al-Taee is ”obviously an antisemite” referring to several different social media posts by al-Taee.
 Facebook posts cause controversy
 Earlier this month Finnish news agency STT reported that in 2014, al-Taee made controversial statements in Facebook posts about the situation in the Middle East, suggesting that Israel and the US had trained Isis terrorists.
 Responding to STT, al-Taee said, ”I want to apologise for equating Israel and Isis because that comment was simply stupid and does not represent my values in any way."
 Yle reported on al-Taee's comments last week when the  newly-elected SDP MP came under scrutiny over contentious Facebook posts  and his then-employer CMI said it stood behind al-Taee.
 According to Verkkouutiset, a political publication owned by the National Coalition Party, CMI's director  Tuija Talvitie  said that she was contacted by the Jerusalem Post by email after the paper published its article about al-Taee on Sunday. She reportedly said that the CMI condemns any inappropriate or degrading comments about any ethnic, religious, national or other groups.
 Verkkouutiset reported that according to CMI's Twitter feed, the reason that al-Taee's name is no longer on the website is because he started working as an MP last Tuesday and no longer worked for the conflict resolution group.