The Green Party Programme

A Good Life Within the Limits of Our Planet

– The Green Party Programme

This programme was adopted at the Party Congress on 24 May 2026.

It replaces the political programme adopted in 2022.

NOTE! This is an unreviewed machine-translated version of the programme text. The machine translation will be replaced by a professional translation when it is complete.

Making the Change We Want to See

The Greens want to build a future that is both ecologically and socially just. We are building a society that is caring, safe, communal, and just – a society that provides adequate safety nets and the opportunity to fulfil oneself and pursue a good life according to one’s own choices. Our goal is a society that creates and distributes wellbeing, encourages innovation, diligence, and entrepreneurship within the sustainable limits of nature and climate. In a Green Finland, culture and education are valuable in their own right.

The state of the world is serious. The fight against the climate crisis is too slow, and nature is being impoverished at an accelerating pace. Natural resources are being consumed faster than they regenerate, and human life is not fitting within the carrying capacity of the planet.

Wealth and power are increasingly concentrating in the hands of the few, power politics is overriding rules-based cooperation, and internal divisions within societies have deepened. All of these phenomena are visible in Finland too.

The future is not without hope, however. The world does not change on its own – it is changed by people. We can make the world better ourselves. The goal of Green politics is a good future for all: for people, for animals, for Finland, for the world, for nature.

We believe in progress and enlightenment. We defend human rights, democracy, and freedom. We build an equal and non-discriminatory world. We know that an economy can only be sustainable when it operates within the carrying capacity of the planet and when the wealth we create together is shared justly.

This programme has been drawn up together as a Green movement, and it sets out the Greens’ key goals from the local to the global level. As a Finnish party, most of the programme’s content focuses on national or EU-level policy.

The Greens’ most important goals are:

Solving the climate crisis and halting biodiversity loss
Updating the welfare state for this century
Sustainably reforming the Finnish economy
Promoting human rights, equality, and non-discrimination, and strengthening the rule of law
Defending education and enlightenment, and sustainably harnessing research and technology
Just regional development and just immigration
Securing peace, stability, and democracy in Finland, Europe, and the world

1 ONE-PLANET POLITICS – TACKLING THE CLIMATE CRISIS AND BIODIVERSITY LOSS

The climate crisis, biodiversity loss, pollution, and other environmental crises are the most serious global threats of our time. A stable climate, functioning ecosystems, and biodiversity are the foundation of human wellbeing, and nature has intrinsic value of its own. Human activity must return within planetary boundaries.

The Greens demand action to halt environmental crises at all levels of society. Activities that are harmful to the environment must be restricted, and polluters must be responsible for the costs they cause. If something cannot be done sustainably, it should not be done at all.

By solving environmental problems, we can also promote health, wellbeing, and the economy. Sustainable mobility and dietary practices, and green living environments, increase wellbeing, and climate solutions can create economic opportunities. Abandoning fossil energy strengthens self-sufficiency and security of supply. Not all measures are economically profitable in the short term, but this is no reason to leave them undone. They are essential for securing a viable future.

The European Union plays a central role in climate and nature policy. Effective regulation and market-based steering instruments reduce environmental harm both within and outside the EU. Finland must promote strong and effective environmental policy in the EU and internationally.

Finland is among the world’s heaviest consumers of natural resources and most environmentally burdensome countries relative to its population, and therefore Finland must bear special responsibility for halting environmental crises.

The Greens promotes ending overconsumption, moderating consumption habits, and the circular economy. Forests must be used more sustainably to secure biodiversity and carbon sinks. The Greens wants to accelerate the sustainability transformation in agriculture and free transport from fossil fuel dependency. We would set strict limits on mining to prevent environmental harm. Emissions reductions in energy production and industry must be further accelerated so that we transition to a fossil-free energy system.

For the Greens, animals have intrinsic value independent of humans, and society has a moral obligation to secure animal welfare. We want to end animal abuse and industrial animal production. Legislation must be based on up-to-date research on animals’ needs. Animals must be guaranteed good treatment and the opportunity for the species-appropriate behaviour that is important to their wellbeing.

Halting climate warming

The Greens’ goal is a carbon-negative Finland that removes more greenhouse gas emissions from the atmosphere than it produces. The first step is to make Finland carbon neutral by 2035. That means ending the use of fossil fuels in all sectors. Moderating logging volumes and the sustainable use of peatlands are key to strengthening carbon sinks. We must also address consumption-based emissions – those arising from Finnish consumption both at home and abroad.

Completing the Green Energy Transition

End the burning of fossil fuels, peat, and roundwood for energy, and accelerate the rapid reduction of other combustion-based energy production. Capture the carbon dioxide produced from combustion.
Remove the tax subsidy for industrial-scale wood burning.
Promote the construction of zero-emission energy. Site wind and solar power plants in already-developed areas, on building surfaces, and on degraded land rather than in natural areas. Move away from rigid distance requirements while minimising noise and environmental impacts. Promote the reconciliation of radar surveillance and wind power construction.
Where needed, support the start-up of offshore wind power through, for example, short-term support for the construction of the first project.
Develop energy storage and increase demand-side flexibility through, for example, financial incentives.
Ensure nuclear power safety through stringent regulation and oversight. Enable the continued operation of existing plants for as long as the relevant authority deems it safe. Ensure that unnecessary regulation does not prevent the use of new nuclear technologies or their applications, such as district heat production or small modular reactors.
Moderate energy consumption, increase waste heat recovery, and promote energy efficiency.
Promote a green hydrogen economy, with particular emphasis on activities where breaking away from fossil fuels is most challenging, such as steel and fertiliser production and fuels for aviation and maritime transport. Refine green hydrogen into high-value products for domestic use and export.

Raising Carbon Sinks to a Sustainable Level

Combine forestry taxation and subsidies into a whole in which the economic interests of forest owners align with nature and climate goals.
Increase the value-added processing level of the forest industry so that more value is created from a smaller volume of wood.
Increase the share of timber construction and other long-lived wood products in total wood use.
Introduce a carbon rent mechanism or other incentive for strengthening carbon sinks and stocks in private forests.
Reform the Forest Act: restore requirements on tree girth and age, set minimum quotas for living retention trees and deadwood, and ease thinning requirements.
Strengthen carbon sinks in peatlands, for example by rewetting drained peat fields.
Promote technological carbon removal by supporting investments in the early stage and developing strong and permanent incentives for production. However, technological carbon removal must not be allowed to undermine emissions reductions.

Freeing Transport from Fossil Fuel Dependency

Accelerate the electrification of all transport and the use of biogas, especially in heavy transport, ships, and work machines. Support the construction of a general charging and biogas refuelling network for heavy transport.
Increase fuel taxes and CO2-based car and vehicle taxes, require that new cars sold in the EU are zero-emission by 2035, and support housing companies in installing charging points. If EU-level action does not proceed, nationally ban the registration of new fossil fuel cars in Finland by 2035.
Reduce the VAT rate on public transport and increase support for public transport. Develop tram services in major cities, suburban rail in urban regions throughout Finland, and encourage municipalities to develop and deploy regional public transport solutions.
Reduce the need for car use by promoting walking, cycling, and public transport in cities and built-up areas and reducing the planning of car-dependent urban structures, enabling more people to get by without a private car.
Remove the over-compensation in the mileage allowance and limit the company car benefit to fully electric vehicles.
Increase the use of electrofuels in transport. Raise the distribution obligation within the limits of sustainable biofuel availability and increase the share of synthetic renewable fuels within it.
End state subsidies to aviation and introduce an aviation tax. Promote the removal of aviation kerosene tax exemption and the VAT exemption on international flights.
Speed up and expand rail transport, focusing on connections that most significantly reduce car and air travel. Increase track maintenance and electrification and eliminate network bottlenecks. Shift more freight to rail and waterways.
Promote cross-border rail connections in the EU.
Prioritise improving existing roads over building new motorway and overtaking lane sections.

Safeguarding biodiversity

A diverse natural environment is a prerequisite for human life. The Greens demands a halt to biodiversity loss through, among other means, expanding protected areas and restoring degraded habitats. At the same time, we must prevent new environmental harms and increase access to nature in cities. Achieving good water status still requires much work.

Ensuring Adequate Nature Conservation

By 2030, protect at least 30 per cent of Finland’s land and water area so that at least 10 per cent is strictly protected. Ensure that protected areas are distributed evenly across the country and across diverse habitat types, and that protected areas are sufficiently well connected to one another.
Increase funding for nature conservation and restoration.
Make ecological compensation mandatory.
Develop nature value trading that incentivises landowners to increase biodiversity on their land.
Require large companies to investigate and report the impacts of their operations on nature as part of sustainability reporting.
Combat the spread of harmful invasive species.

Halting the Decline of Forest and Peatland Nature

Make clear-cutting subject to licensing and make continuous cover forestry the mainstream harvesting method. Ban clear-cutting on peatlands.
Combat deforestation by introducing a land-use change levy. Ban new land clearance for fields from forest and peatland areas.
Protect all old, natural, and near-natural forests according to research-based definitions.
Abolish forestry subsidies that are harmful to biodiversity and redirect support from timber production towards promoting biodiversity.
Increase mixed-species composition in managed forest care.
Ban logging during the bird breeding season.
Support the restoration of peatlands with degraded natural values.
Manage state, municipal, and parish forests with nature values as the primary consideration.

Protecting Clean Water Bodies and Aquatic Life

Legislate mandatory, adequate buffer zones along the shores of water bodies. Step up guidance and ex-post supervision under the Water Act to ensure that small watercourses are effectively protected.
Ban new drainage ditching and make renovation drainage subject to licensing.
Effectively address agricultural nutrient loading through support policy and regulation.
Reduce water and climate emissions from drained peatland forests by transitioning to paludiculture.
Free the most important rivers for migratory fish and dismantle the most harmful and least energy-productive dams. Ensure that fish passage obligations at hydropower plants are up to date with regard to the natural reproduction of fish and other aquatic organisms, and that the obligations are complied with.
Ban fishing methods that endanger the Saimaa ringed seal in areas where it occurs.
Strengthen Baltic Sea protection and restoration work and continue the Archipelago Sea programme.

Promoting Urban Biodiversity

Protect local nature in cities according to the 3-30-300 principle: at least three trees visible from every window, at least 30 per cent of each urban district covered by tree canopy, and no more than 300 metres from every front door to the nearest green space.
Protect existing local nature sites and increase biodiversity as well as gardening and cultivation opportunities in urban areas. Convert lawns to meadows, reduce over-maintenance of green areas, and minimise tree felling in the course of construction.
Ensure the preservation of valuable natural areas, the green network, and ecological corridors to protect urban biodiversity.
Harness nature-based solutions, such as green surfaces, for water management and cooling.
Consider bird migration routes in construction and always build in a way that is safe for birds.

Reducing natural resource consumption to a sustainable level

Aligning the economy with planetary boundaries requires reducing total natural resource consumption. The Greens demands a just and managed transition towards a steady-state economy in which consumption does not exceed the rate at which natural resources regenerate. Repairing and servicing products must always be cheaper than buying new ones. Reuse and recycling must be more profitable than ending up as waste. Through a Green Tax Reform (see Chapter 3) and other policy instruments, we will ensure that the circular economy becomes mainstream. Agriculture too needs a sustainability transformation that strengthens self-sufficiency, security of supply, and ecological and climate resilience.

Reducing the Use of Virgin Natural Resources

Set a target to reduce natural resource consumption to a sustainable level – approximately eight tonnes per person per year – by 2035.
Set a target to halve the use of virgin raw materials in the EU by 2040.
Introduce a tax on the excavation of virgin earth masses.
Introduce a natural resource tax on the use of all virgin materials.
Extend the waste tax to cover all waste going to landfill and to incineration plants. Include waste incineration plants in the EU emissions trading system.

Promoting a Circular Economy

Promote a culture of repair, for example by lowering VAT on repair services. Promote product longevity through EU regulation.
Promote material recycling through taxation and introduce a recycled raw material blending obligation. Direct more R&D&I funding to circular economy solutions.
Promote renovation construction and support the maintenance of the built heritage. Require that when large buildings are demolished, the possibilities for change of use are first investigated.
Require builders to recycle construction materials and components more efficiently. Set a requirement for public construction projects to use a minimum share of recycled or reused building materials.
Remove barriers to the sharing economy and create incentives for its promotion, for example for housing companies to adopt shared spaces, car-sharing, and small appliances.
Tighten regulation on misleading advertising to prevent greenwashing. Ban advertising for the most environmentally harmful products.
Curb the cheap goods economy by introducing both EU-level and national measures such as raising customs barriers, levies, taxes, or regulation. Use these to also strengthen product repairability and consumer protection.
Improve textile industry sustainability so that the producer responsibility levy is graduated taking into account the share of recycled materials.

Setting Strict Conditions for Mining

Ban mineral exploration and the establishment of mines in nature conservation areas and valuable natural areas and their vicinities.
Set clear and strict limit values for nutrient and chemical loading caused by mines and industrial plants. Tighten quality criteria and supervision of mining structures.
Ensure that mining companies’ securities and payments for environmental damage compensation are at an adequate level. Closure works and any damages after a mine closes must not fall to taxpayers.
Increase the mining tax and extend it to all excavated material, including mine overburden. Extend the waste tax to cover mining waste.
Require mines to compensate residents for the harms caused to them.
Safeguard the Sámi people’s right to influence decisions on mines planned for Sápmi.

Making Agriculture Sustainable

Gradually transition away from industrial animal production towards plant-based production. Make remaining animal husbandry more ethically and ecologically sustainable by steering towards moderate animal numbers, organic production, and the use of natural pastures.
Reform the EU agricultural support system to incentivise environmentally friendly crop production. Promote extending emissions trading to agriculture.
Halve the serving of animal-based products in public catering by 2030. Require the serving of food that meets current nutritional recommendations.
Investigate the introduction of a harm levy based on animal density to reduce the environmental burden and animal welfare harms of large animal farms.
Encourage the cultivation and processing of plant proteins. Ensure the competitiveness of legumes through support policy and pilots.
Introduce a meat tax.
Promote the diversity of domestic food production and ensure an adequate level of agricultural self-sufficiency.
Promote biogas production and the use of recycled fertilisers. Biogas production must not create new dependencies on animal production.
Increase organic production and promote climate-friendly farming practices.
Ensure the preservation of natural pastures and other traditional biotopes through adequate financial support.

Strengthening nature’s voice in decision-making

Nature must not be trampled in decision-making. The Greens would end the support of environmentally harmful activities and ensure that public or publicly supported investments do not cause significant harm to nature. The Greens demands comprehensive oversight and adequate penalties for environmental pollution. The investigation and sanctioning of environmental crimes must also be strengthened.

Strengthening the Consideration of Climate and Nature in Regulation

Abolish all environmentally harmful subsidies.
Abolish the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry and divide its responsibilities between the Ministry of the Environment and the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Employment.
Enact a Nature Act corresponding to the Climate Act, setting binding targets for improving biodiversity and strengthening the status of the Finnish Nature Panel.
Improve citizens’ ability to address the degradation of the state of the environment by including environmental damage in the class action law.
Strengthen the supervision of laws concerning the environment and the combating of illegal fishing and hunting. Tighten penalties for environmental crimes.
Restore the obligation for municipalities to draw up a climate plan and impose an obligation to draw up a biodiversity plan.
Tighten the carbon footprint limit for construction so that building sector emissions are in line with Finland’s carbon neutrality target. Also require assessment of climate impacts and compliance with limit values in single-family house construction.
Require the calculation of climate and nature impacts in land use planning and the compensation of resulting harms.
Assess the climate and environmental impacts of public investments and subsidies. Apply the “do no significant harm” principle in public support.
Enshrine rights for nature in the Constitution.

Improving animal rights

The Greens is always on the side of animal rights. Animals have the right to the species-appropriate behaviour important to their wellbeing and to dignified treatment, which requires stricter legislation, supervision, and bans on practices that cause suffering than we currently have. In the long term, industrial animal production must be ended entirely. Our current way of life is based on the exploitation of an unprecedented number of animals, which is ecologically and ethically unsustainable. Pain is morally significant regardless of species. The legal status of animals must be strengthened so that animals too have a genuine right to the protection of the law.

Strengthening the Legal Status of Animals

Add animal rights to the Constitution. Improve animals’ rights to the species-appropriate behaviour, social contact with conspecifics, satisfaction of basic needs, and a life free from fear, pain, anxiety, or suffering caused by humans – all of which are essential to their wellbeing.
Grant animals legal standing in legal matters concerning them, such as animal protection offences and administrative matters involving animals. The animal would be represented by, for example, the animal’s guardian, the Animal Welfare Ombudsman, or an animal welfare organisation.
Restore the Animal Welfare Ombudsman position and the resources required for the work.
Invest in the prevention of and response to animal welfare problems, improve legal processes, and ensure that animal keeping bans are enforced.

Reducing Animal Suffering

Ban fur farming. Pay farmers a surrender premium that is higher the more quickly production is ended.
Promote EU regulation requiring that products imported from outside the EU also meet EU welfare requirements.
Combat misleading welfare claims in the marketing of animal products.
Introduce a welfare-based harm levy on imported products whose production practices are weaker than Finnish animal welfare legislation.
Ban all cruel and unethical production practices, such as surgical castration of piglets, CO2 stunning, and the killing of day-old male chicks. Ban farrowing crates and cage farming of animals.
Increase the space, enrichment, and opportunities for species-appropriate life available to farmed animals.
Set maximum stocking densities and other welfare requirements for fish farming.
Make harmful breeding of animals a punishable offence. Ensure the effective enforcement of the breeding prohibition in the Animal Welfare Act for both companion animals and farm animals such as broiler chickens.
Ban the hunting and fishing of endangered species and the cruelest hunting and fishing practices.
Do not allow quota hunting of large predators for population management purposes. Do not allow the hunting of grey seals.

2 THE GREEN WELFARE STATE – COMBATING POVERTY AND ENSURING QUALITY SERVICES

The Green Welfare State is a promise of a life of dignity for everyone. At its core are prevention and timely, holistic assistance in all life situations. When support is received in time, people do better and society prospers. This is both a humanely and an economically wise policy.

The welfare state is not merely an expenditure item that can be cut recklessly; it is an investment in a vibrant society. It creates equality, stability, and security that enable risk-taking, entrepreneurship, and community.

The promise of the welfare state is under threat, however. Inequality is growing, poverty is increasing, and people are left without help. This development is both unjust and unsustainable.

While Finns’ longevity is a significant achievement of the welfare state, an ageing population poses new challenges for the funding and workforce of welfare services. Care work in Finland is still strongly gendered, and a large share of it is done unpaid in families. The Greens wants to ensure that care work is distributed more evenly, valued, and fairly remunerated.

An ageing population poses new challenges for the funding and workforce of welfare services. Solving these challenges cannot happen at the expense of wellbeing. Everyone must receive the social and health services they need at the right time, in the right place, delivered by the right professionals and organised with high quality. Services must be accessible, equal, and barrier-free. When services are effective, targeted correctly, and function as a whole, we use common resources wisely and, above all, increase people’s wellbeing.

The Greens would replace the current patchwork social security with a universal basic income-based model. With a basic income, those seeking social security would not need to navigate bureaucracy, accepting work would always be worthwhile, and social security would support people in developing their skills. The humiliation of benefit recipients must end, and the system must be transformed into a flexible, encouraging safety net that respects people.

Poverty has lasting harmful effects on society and individuals, for children even across an entire lifetime. For this reason, child poverty must be systematically eliminated from Finland through policy that supports families with children.

Adequate income is a fundamental and human right that must be guaranteed for everyone. Social security must cover the basic needs of life and enable active participation in society without fear of losing basic support or encountering bureaucratic traps. Everyone living in Finland must have the right to social security, and immigrants’ social security must not be separated from general social security. Income and wealth disparities also mean disparities in wellbeing and health, and poverty makes life bleak. In an insecure society, where unemployment or bankruptcy can cause financial catastrophe, people do not dare take risks, pursue their dreams, or try something new. That is why social security policy that supports people’s wellbeing is also sound public finance policy. The starting point must therefore be a simple, gapless, and equal social security system that enables those receiving benefits the freedom to decide about their own lives.

The Greens’ universal basic income model means a basic security payment automatically made to everyone, which simplifies the current complex benefit system. Universal basic income is the foundation on top of which other benefits and earned income are built.

Moving Towards Basic Income

Gradually introduce a universal basic income for all adults and independently living minors within the Finnish social security system.
As a first step, introduce a monthly universal basic income of 200–300 euros.
Gradually raise the universal basic income to 600 euros. Introduce a municipality-specific housing supplement of 100–400 euros for all adults and independently living minors. In addition, purpose-based benefits will be paid.
Remove tax deductions and increase earned income taxation to phase out the universal basic income, so that the benefit of the universal basic income is directed to low-income earners.

Sever the links between social, health, and employment services and benefits so that a client can always receive the service they need without having to be within the scope of a particular benefit, and vice versa.
Individualise the entire social security system for adults so that other persons’ situations do not affect an individual’s benefits.
Abolish unemployment benefit waiting periods and other sanctions that penalise the unemployed. As a step towards universal basic income, abolish the job-seeking obligation as a condition of unemployment benefit and the related bureaucracy.
Merge sickness allowance, rehabilitation allowance, and rehabilitation money into a general benefit. Enable the receipt of general benefit also on social grounds, improving general benefit coverage and reducing the need for last-resort social assistance. Resist attempts to merge housing benefits or social assistance into the general benefit.

Combating Poverty and Dismantling Inactivity Traps

Raise basic security to reduce the need for last-resort social assistance. Remove the link between basic security and earnings-related benefit so that raising basic security is possible without an automatic increase in earnings-related benefit.
Restore protected amounts in benefits so that benefit recipients can receive a small income without their benefit being cut or payment being delayed. Improve incentives for accepting part-time work.
Index all social security benefits to appropriate indices. Combat index freezes, especially on the smallest benefits.
Halve family poverty by 2032.
Create an earnings-related component for the unemployed within the general benefit paid by Kela (the Social Insurance Institution of Finland), payable to those who do not belong to an unemployment fund.
Improve housing benefits by increasing the general housing benefit, making it individual, and moving the entire population under the general housing benefit.
Restore the ability to receive general housing benefit for owner-occupied housing costs, excluding personal and housing company loan repayments. Remove the wealth test from the general housing benefit.
Improve students’ ability to focus on their studies without being forced into debt by increasing the study grant and indexing it. Remove the requirement to take out a student loan before receiving last-resort social assistance.
Combat pensioner poverty by ensuring the adequacy of the smallest pensions and narrow pension gaps by addressing their structural causes. Reduce healthcare and medication costs for low-income pensioners.
Improve the safety net of last resort and restore protected amounts in social assistance at an increased rate. Remove the child benefit from income calculation in social assistance. Remove the possibility of reducing social assistance as a punishment.
Ensure that people do not need to rely on food banks to get by. Create an action programme to reduce the need for food bank assistance.
Reduce healthcare client fees and the out-of-pocket caps. Automatically waive fees for low-income individuals to improve equitable access to services.

Ensuring Adequate Retirement Income and Pension System Sustainability

Combat pensioner poverty by ensuring the adequacy of the smallest pensions.
Extend working careers. Encourage work during retirement, support flexible working arrangements, and promote work ability. Raise the automatic retirement age under the Employment Contracts Act to 75 years.
Extend earnings-related pension coverage to all forms of work. All paid work must accrue earnings-related pension, regardless of whether it is performed as an employee, entrepreneur, grant recipient, or in another form.
Enable self-employed persons to pay pension contributions on actual taxable earned income.
Introduce a gradual reduction model in disability pensions in which earned income exceeding the protected amount reduces the pension gradually.
Ensure that a person on disability pension does not risk losing their entitlement to the benefit if they try working.

The Greens builds accessible, high-quality, equal, and barrier-free social and health services for everyone, regardless of wealth and background. Services must respond to needs at the right time and in the right place. The underlying principles must be evidence-based practice, prevention, and continuity of care. Public healthcare and preventive social services must be strengthened, the effectiveness of services must be increased, and resources must be used more purposefully than at present. Social security and services must work together seamlessly so that a person receives comprehensive help for their situation.

Investing in Primary-Level Services

Implement a 14-day guarantee for non-urgent primary healthcare and a three-month guarantee for dental care.
Strengthen primary-level services. Invest in early, rapid, and holistic support for clients and their families. Identify those with high service needs and make it easier to combine different services.
Improve continuity of care, for example through a dedicated care team model, and address the under-resourcing of primary healthcare and social welfare.
Improve the accessibility of local services by using pharmacies as a low-threshold health service.
Fix the wellbeing services counties’ funding model. Grant wellbeing services counties taxing rights, alongside which funding is distributed fairly. Replace the unnecessarily complex current model with a more predictable solution that incentivises prevention, is based on effectiveness, and treats different wellbeing services counties equitably. Dismantle the multi-channel funding system.
Ensure long-term public funding for social and health sector organisations (NGOs).
Guarantee access to gynaecological care in public healthcare rather than directing patients to private gynaecology services.
Promote research on and teaching of gynaecological and other relatively under-researched disease groups to improve access to and quality of care.
Take into account the linguistic and cultural needs of minorities in social and health services and enable interpretation in all necessary situations.

Better Services on People’s Own Terms

Reform occupational health services to focus on prevention and maintaining work ability.
Gradually phase out Kela reimbursements for private healthcare and strengthen the funding of wellbeing services counties.
Strengthen YTHS’s (Finnish Student Health Service) role as an expert in student health and secure its adequate resources.
Increase informal carer payments and harmonise their award criteria nationwide. Ensure carers’ access to adequate holidays. Ensure that informal care does not reduce income or pension accrual.
Improve the ability of those caring for loved ones to reconcile work and care by developing flexible working arrangements and adequate support services.
Establish advisory points for the elderly where people can access open appointments with a public health nurse and social welfare worker and receive service guidance and advice on healthy lifestyles.
Assess the adequacy of round-the-clock care and size it appropriately as the number of older people grows. Increase family care in services for the elderly, mental health and substance abuse rehabilitees, people with disabilities, and child welfare.
Strengthen people’s right to self-determination at the end of life and enact legislation permitting euthanasia. Ensure access to palliative care and hospice care through legislation.
Legislate the right for working people to take palliative care leave and receive compensation during a loved one’s hospice care.
Take care of social and health professionals. Include staff in planning changes to their own work. Make occupational wellbeing a top priority and enable flexible working in different life situations.
Increase patients’ equality and the cost-effectiveness of treatments by improving the transparency of healthcare prioritisation.

Fixing Mental Health Services

Draw up a comprehensive mental health services development programme to ensure quality of care and address the deficiencies and serious resource shortfall in the service system.
Ensure low-threshold mental health services and uninterrupted care pathways for everyone.
Extend the therapy guarantee to cover the entire population and ensure need-based, evidence-based care without being bound to specific methods.
Ensure access to long-term psychotherapy as well. Improve access to rehabilitation psychotherapy by developing the targeting of therapy, raising the level of reimbursement, and increasing flexibility in the number of appointments.
Improve primary-level mental health services for children, young people, and students to meet current needs and address the serious resource shortfall.
Strengthen the equality and equity of mental health services by taking into account, among other factors, economic barriers, linguistic and cultural backgrounds, the needs of different genders, age groups, minorities, and special groups, and accessibility. Include the concerns of loved ones in treatment.
Improve the identification of neurodiversity and the support provided, as part of mental health services and in working, learning, and living environments.
Ensure adequate resourcing and hospital places for specialised psychiatric care to speed up access to treatment.
Increase mental health and substance abuse competence for social and health professionals working in all sectors, for example to better take into account clients’ trauma histories.
Ensure the availability of psychosocial support for those with chronic and terminal conditions. Take into account the overlap between mental health problems and physical health problems in healthcare.
Strengthen patients’ rights to access neuropsychiatric assessments and receive appropriate treatment.
Recognise civil society organisations as part of the mental health services system.

Humane Drug Policy

Decriminalise the use of all illegal substances.
Ensure low-threshold substance abuse services and uninterrupted care pathways for everyone. Substance abuse services must identify gender-related risks and provide safe and gender-sensitive services and care pathways.
Strengthen the resources of municipalities, wellbeing services counties, and other parties doing preventive substance abuse work in statutory preventive substance abuse work.
Ensure that substance use does not prevent people from getting help for mental health problems. Ensure smooth care pathways that treat both challenges simultaneously. Introduce a contingency management model that encourages remaining in treatment and progressing along the care pathway.
Invest in harm reduction work. Establish supervised drug consumption rooms for illegal substances, offering, in addition to safe spaces, low-threshold services.
Develop and harmonise opioid substitution therapy and abstinence-based treatment practices and access to treatment across Finland.
Conduct a broad-based review of drug policy development, including an assessment of the impacts and implementation options for cannabis legalisation.
Legalise cannabis by placing it under appropriate substance regulation and taxation. Ensure medical use for those who need it.
Move slot machines to separate gaming halls or casinos.

Supporting an Active Lifestyle from Children to the Elderly

Promote everyday exercise through good walking and cycling connections and prioritise route maintenance. Invest in the construction of exercise facilities in everyday environments.
Ensure children’s ability to walk and cycle to school safely when school is nearby.
Establish the national physical activity promotion programmes – Active Early Childhood Education, Active School, and Active Studies – as a permanent part of municipal activities.
Restore the employer-supported cycling benefit to encourage cycling as a commuting mode.
Support older people’s exercise opportunities by arranging accessible, easily reachable, and affordably priced exercise opportunities and group activities.
Dismantle the inequality of sports hobbies by directing development support for club activities to low-threshold recreational activities.

Preventing Marginalisation

Eliminate homelessness by 2030. Ensure the availability of affordable housing, ensure the adequacy of housing guidance and support services, and a sufficient support system for securing housing.
Prevent the drift into crime by combating poverty and strengthening prevention and professionals’ capabilities. In particular, prevent youth crime and support disengagement from criminal activity.
Address youth violence through strong child welfare, outreach youth work, cooperation with police and guardians, and by increasing various levels of support and specialist small child welfare units for severely symptomatic young people.
Ensure that all people, regardless of residency status, have the right and practical access to the basic services required for a life of dignity, such as comprehensive healthcare and social services.
Reduce healthcare client fees.

Strengthening the Human Rights of People with Disabilities

Reform the Disability Services Act to strengthen self-determination. Prevent the restriction of services based on the age of a disabled person.
Ensure the availability and equality of personal assistance nationwide based on individual needs.
Guarantee disabled people the right to choose their own assistant and the content of support.
Make service and support decisions for disabled people presumptively valid until further notice and based on individual needs.
Ensure that disability-based supports enable flexible family life and housing, including shared custody arrangements and various family forms.
Guarantee disabled people’s right to permanent housing and the right to decide on their own place of residence by excluding housing-related services from the scope of the Public Procurement Act.
Improve multisectoral support for neurodivergent people and their opportunities for equal life.
Establish a national Disability Ombudsman post to monitor the realisation of the rights of disabled people.

Investing in children, young people, and families

The Greens wants to guarantee every child and young person a good and safe life. Everyone must also have equal opportunities to fulfil their family-building wishes. Society’s care for children and young people is often fragmented, and particularly children’s vulnerabilities are not sufficiently taken into account. Families with children are left alone with their challenges too often.

Strengthening Support and Opportunities for Children, Young People, and Families

Strengthen comprehensive and early support for children, young people, and families, from the maternity clinic, early childhood education, and school all the way to family centre services and child welfare.
Invest in the implementation of the national child strategy. The child strategy forms the basis for long-term, consistent work to realise children’s rights and build a child-and-family-friendly Finland.
Recognise the diversity of families and ensure the equal status of all kinds of families in legislation and services.
Ensure enjoyable, free hobbies for every child and young person. Develop the Finnish model for hobbying and create pathways from it to goal-oriented and long-term engagement.
Provide for family support, separation services, and the prevention of custody disputes through guidance, mediation, and family work.
Invest in home help for families.
Introduce “teen health clinics” – support services targeted at parents and families of adolescents.
Increase family foster care especially for young people in substitute care. Restore the age limit for after-care in child welfare to 25 years.

Strengthening Children’s Rights

Act in accordance with the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child and promote its realisation worldwide.
Support parents in raising children in a way that respects children’s rights, equality, and self-determination.
Increase training for those working with children and provide action guidelines for identifying and preventing child trafficking and child abduction situations.
Address the restriction and coercive control of girls for cultural or religious reasons.
Protect children and young people from sexual harassment and violence and hold perpetrators accountable.

Supporting the Fulfilment of Family-Building Wishes

Increase the equality, accessibility, psychological support, and resources of fertility treatments. Ensure high-quality fertility information, counselling, and sexual health services for all.
Legalise surrogacy in a non-discriminatory and ethically principled way.
Remove the child number restriction as a criterion for access to fertility treatments in public healthcare.
Legislate the right to be absent from work for fertility treatments or other reasons related to becoming a parent.
Ensure comprehensive and accessible maternity clinic services for pregnant people and families with children, taking into account diverse family situations. Increase physiotherapy services for pregnant and postpartum people, and psychosocial support after miscarriage.
Support becoming a parent during studies and student parents by making the child supplement to study support child-specific.

Enable children to have more than two legal parents and allow children living in shared custody to have two official addresses, so that they are considered in both homes’ social security and services.
Reform the maintenance system so that it guarantees adequate maintenance for all children, including immediately after parents separate.
Raise the age limit for child benefit so that entitlement ends when the child turns 18. Enable the child benefit to be split between parents.
Introduce bereavement leave for those who have lost a loved one.
Reform parental leave. Implement a model in which the right to parental leave is divided equally between parents with a small flexible portion.
Centralise childcare benefits under Kela’s flexible care allowance and abolish home care allowance and partial care allowance. Enable the receipt of flexible care allowance also outside working life and its payment at a flat rate for all children.

3 ECONOMY AS A TOOL – STRENGTHENING EMPLOYMENT AND ENTREPRENEURSHIP, MAKING POLLUTERS PAY

Green economic policy aims at wellbeing within the carrying capacity of the planet. For the Greens, the economy is not an end in itself; the market economy and public finances are tools for building sustainable wellbeing. Rather than economic growth, what matters is what kind of wellbeing and effects economic activity enables.

The world economy is in transition. The climate crisis, biodiversity loss, an ageing population, technological development, and geopolitical and economic crises are transforming production, consumption, and work. Growing income and wealth disparities and the accumulation of power and prosperity in ever fewer hands are a threat to stable societies, human rights, and democracy. Multiple simultaneous crises require economic resilience that safeguards wellbeing in all circumstances.

As the economy has grown, climate emissions and natural resource use have also grown. We have been living beyond our means. Building the Green Welfare State is a major challenge that requires significant reforms in policy and economics.

Finland’s public finances are in a challenging position. They are burdened by debt, a deteriorating dependency ratio, weaker productivity growth than peer countries, unemployment, and gaps in the tax base.

More significant than the public finance debt ratio and a single year’s deficit is the long-term sustainability gap and the political inability to reform structures. Finland is in a self-reinforcing cycle of deficits, which threatens the realisation of the welfare state’s key functions, climate and nature policy, and social renewal.

Consolidation cannot rely on cuts alone. Taxation must be increased and the economy reformed. Finland needs Green productivity, in which more value and common good is created per working hour and per natural resource used. Consolidation must be done in a way that supports emissions reductions, poverty reduction, equality, and gender equality. Excessively harsh cuts will destroy the welfare state.

The Greens’ methods safeguard both wellbeing and a vibrant planet. We equalise income and wealth disparities and ensure an adequate tax base to cover functioning public services and social security. The welfare state’s growth dependency must be dismantled so that people’s wellbeing can be secured regardless of whether the decoupling of economic growth and environmental harm succeeds. The Greens measures the success of economic policy with indicators that describe the wellbeing of nature and people. The economy must work for people and the planet, not at their expense. A just transition also requires feminist economic policy – recognising people’s wellbeing, equality, and ecological sustainability as the foundation of the economy, not as an expenditure item. Economic growth must in future take place in a socially just and environmentally sustainable way.

Taxation is, for the Greens, a tool to steer society towards greater sustainability and justice. We want to put a price tag on environmental destruction and shift the focus of taxation from taxing work and entrepreneurship to taxing harms, consumption, and property. We are prepared to increase taxes on those with the greatest ability to pay in order to justly secure strong public services and society’s ability to respond to the challenges of the age.

The Greens wants to create new work and entrepreneurship and ensure that everyone can participate in the labour market according to their situation. We offer education and employment pathways for all those born here and those who have moved to Finland for various reasons, and we take care of the conditions for sustainable business.

Strengthening public finances broadly

Green fiscal policy is counter-cyclical, i.e. smoothing out economic fluctuations. Public finances must be continuously strong enough that fiscal policy does not need to be tightened in unexpected crises. For the Greens, strengthening public finances has as a key objective intergenerational fairness, narrowing income and wealth disparities, and promoting sustainable development.

Responding to the greatest social challenges of our time and achieving stable, predictable societal development requires fiscal policy room for manoeuvre. With economic room to manoeuvre, crises can be overcome so that no one is left behind and macroeconomic stability is maintained. Halting climate warming, for example, requires large-scale investments that must be carried out regardless of the economic cycle.

Curbing Debt and Accounting for Economic Cycles

Strengthen Finland’s public finances by reforming taxation and broadening the tax base, carefully pruning expenditure, and reforming the economy.
Implement counter-cyclical policy by, among other means, timing public investments.
Pursue counter-cyclical fiscal policy: reduce public expenditure and raise taxes during economic growth to prevent overheating. Correspondingly, increase expenditure and cut taxes during recession to stimulate the economy.
Draw up a parliamentary cross-term commitment in Finland to setting ecological boundary conditions for economic development and reversing the economy’s sustainability gap.
Direct public investments towards the green transition and safeguard climate and nature investments in all economic cycles.
Target fiscal policy room for manoeuvre by growing the labour force, reforming taxation, increasing incentives for innovation, improving productivity, raising educational attainment, and prioritising expenditure targets.
Reform the spending limits procedure. Separate long-term investments, such as research and development, education, and green transition investments, from current expenditure. Take into account, within the spending limits, changes in state revenues also caused by decisions.

Transitioning to a steady-state economy

The cornerstone of Green economic policy is the steady-state economy, which aims for an ecologically sustainable and wellbeing-supporting economic system. Natural resource use must be reduced and finite natural resources used in a way that genuinely increases wellbeing. What is essential is dismantling growth dependency, narrowing welfare disparities, and preventing the concentration of economic power. For the Greens, sustainable wellbeing means a meaningful life, not material consumption.

Taking First Steps Towards a Steady-State Economy

Strengthen the broad impact assessment of economic policy and the binding consideration of impacts in decision-making. Better account for impacts on climate and nature, different genders, age groups, and income brackets, and societal trust.
Carry out a broad review of the growth dependency of Finland’s economy, welfare state, and wellbeing, and ways of dismantling growth dependency.
Measure the success of economic policy primarily with indicators describing wellbeing and ecological sustainability.
Introduce new economic policy indicators and tools to support environmental sustainability, equality, and fairness.
Include unpaid care work and work done at home in national accounting.

Renewing the industrial structure and encouraging sustainable entrepreneurship

Finland’s industrial structure is concentrated and natural resource use is unsustainable. The Greens wants to reform the economy to produce more wellbeing with a smaller environmental footprint and encourage entrepreneurship and innovation. We promote healthy and just competition. Small and micro-enterprises, solo entrepreneurs, and the self-employed play a major role, so we also create equal opportunities for new and small businesses. Self-employment and small-scale entrepreneurship are a growing part of working life, but they also involve insecurity and inequality. Working life protections must be developed so that they take into account different life situations and prevent the accumulation of inequality.

Creating Conditions for a Fair Market Economy

Support the growth of green industries and the rapid renewal of industry and the industrial structure.
Abolish inefficient and environmentally harmful business subsidies. Direct business subsidies towards sustainable economic renewal and ecological reconstruction. Require responsibility from recipients of support.
Remove barriers to entrepreneurship and make it easier to move between paid employment, benefits, and entrepreneurship.
Develop company law so that a company’s purpose is broadened from merely producing profit to also taking into account impacts on the environment and society.
Increase just competition. Strengthen the Finnish Competition and Consumer Authority’s resources and powers to intervene in market concentration. Expand the scope of merger control.
Promote the emergence of markets for low-carbon end products, especially in sectors where Finland has a competitive advantage, in order to reduce uncertainty around green transition investments.
Promote the recognition and status of social enterprises and create incentives for social entrepreneurship, for example through taxation. Ensure their opportunities to participate in public procurement.
Increase innovative procurement and market dialogue, and set comprehensive climate and environmental impact reduction and social responsibility criteria for public procurement.
Require large and medium-sized companies to report on gender equality and publish their equality plans.
Direct R&D&I investments towards promoting ecological and social sustainability.
Promote business activity based on intangible value creation. Increase the weight of service industries and cultural creative industries in industrial policy.

Supporting Small and Micro-Enterprises, Solo Entrepreneurs, and the Self-Employed

Facilitate small-scale business activity by minimising bureaucracy and removing artificial barriers to entrepreneurship.
Make hiring the first employee easier. Temporarily exempt self-employed entrepreneurs from employer contributions for the first employee.
Improve the opportunities of small and new businesses to participate in public tenders by dividing procurement into smaller packages. Harness innovation competitions.
Replace the separate unemployment insurance for employees and entrepreneurs with a universal combined insurance for all.

Implementing a green tax reform

Taxation is, for the Greens, both a tool for steering society towards sustainability and justice and a necessary means of financing the welfare state’s operations. The goal of Green tax policy is to ensure an adequate tax base. We want to shift the focus of taxation from taxing work and economic activity to taxing harms and wealth, while ensuring a sufficient level of taxation from the perspective of public finances.

Taxing Harms and Reforming the Tax Base

Reform VAT so that instead of the current four-tier system, a zero rate, a sustainable consumption rate, and a general rate are in use. Introduce a VAT refund on food that is equal for every resident.
Ensure that taxation incentivises work at all income levels, and direct any possible tax cuts to taxing work and sustainable entrepreneurship.
Restore the corporate income tax rate to the Nordic level and prevent harmful tax competition through international coordination and EU regulation.
Harmonise energy taxation and index energy taxation.
Remove the transfer tax on real property, housing company shares, and real estate company shares in the scope of property tax, while simultaneously raising the property tax.
Gradually increase the share of property tax in the tax structure. Reform property taxation so that the tax focuses on land value and land valuation better reflects market rental value.
Combat the grey economy. Thereby promote just labour markets and make it more difficult to finance criminal activity.
Introduce a health-based tax on unhealthy products such as sugar, hard fat, and salt.

Additional information on environment-based harm taxes is in Chapter 1.

Redistributing Wealth

Introduce a temporary defence tax on wealth and large companies to finance defence expenditure.
Introduce a permanent wealth tax on large fortunes and promote this also at the EU level.
Simplify taxation: assess the appropriateness and fairness of all tax deductions and reduce problematic deductions.
Transition to the European model for dividend taxation of unlisted companies, where the taxation of dividends is based on clear euro-denominated limits and the net assets-based relief is removed.
Ensure just progressivity of taxation. Bring capital income taxation closer to earned income taxation and, in the long term, unify the taxation of earned income and capital income.
Increase the taxation of pensions, excluding small pensions. Restrain the growth of pensions and pension expenditure through an earnings-related pension index brake and index freezes. Compensate for the impact of index changes on small pensions by reducing taxation on small pensions and increasing Kela-paid pensions.
Maintain the inheritance tax and tighten the taxation of large inheritances. Ensure entrepreneurs’ genuine opportunities for generational transfers. Limit the generational transfer relief in company inheritance taxation to company assets worth at most two million euros.
Give forest inheritance recipients the opportunity to protect their forest so that they do not need to pay inheritance tax on the protected portion.

Ensuring fair and functioning labour markets

The Greens’ goal is to create human-centred, flexible, equal, and non-discriminatory labour markets. The balance of negotiating power between workers and employers in labour markets must be maintained while labour markets respond to technological and demographic changes and global challenges. In developing labour markets, we must ensure clarity and predictability of regulation, reduce the risk of hiring, and promote the dismantling of labour market segmentation and equality.

Labour markets must be for all kinds of people. Part-time work, gig work, and all work smaller than full-time work is valuable, as is volunteer work. No obstacles should be placed in the way of accepting or doing any kind of work, for example by creating bureaucratic traps or social security prohibitions. Work flexibility, diversity, and part-time working arrangements suited to one’s own situation must be increased in society, not reduced.

Reforming Labour Markets

Raise the employment rate to 80 per cent by 2040. Pay special attention to youth employment.
Increase opportunities for part-time work and part-time entrepreneurship.
Reform the recognition of foreign qualifications and credentials to be smoother and more affordable.
Enable studying for all unemployed persons. Enable studying on general benefit and self-motivated studying that promotes employment on the unemployed person’s own declaration.
Clarify the rules of the platform economy and ensure genuine freedom and power over one’s own work in entrepreneur-form work. Guarantee platform entrepreneurs the legal right to organise and negotiate.
Address the gaps in protection for workers and platform economy workers outside collective bargaining.
Abolish availability testing and sector and job restrictions for workers’ residence permits.
Create a nationally uniform and equal wage subsidy model. Guarantee rapid access to wage subsidies for young people, disabled people, those with partial work ability, and the long-term unemployed.
Combat human trafficking and work-related exploitation and tighten penalties. Increase the resources of supervisory authorities to intervene in, inform about, and sanction violations of labour legislation and work-related exploitation. Ensure that victims of trafficking and related crimes receive the compensation due to them and appropriate legal aid.
Strengthen the liability of public procurement contractors by obliging the contractor to verify the entire subcontracting chain for compliance with employment conditions both at the start and during the contract.
Remove suspicion of sex work as a basis for deportation from the Aliens Act and reform legislation in a way that secures the safety, inclusion, and wellbeing of sex workers. Ensure that sex workers have the right to live free from violence and exploitation.
Reform the funding model of employment services so that it better takes into account economic fluctuations and incentivises timely services for the unemployed, especially the long-term unemployed. Increase the funding of statutory employment services in areas with high long-term unemployment rates.

Rebalancing Power in the Labour Market

Promote non-discriminatory recruitment and diverse working life so that everyone has the opportunity to make full use of their skills in Finland.
Prepare labour market legislation in tripartite cooperation with labour market organisations. At the same time, maintain Parliament’s full legislative powers and the balance between negotiating parties.
Balance the penalty fines under the Collective Agreements Act, give labour market organisations the right to bring class actions, and legislate workers’ interpretive advantage in local collective agreements.
Reform the mediator institution to meet the changed needs of labour markets and ensure the mediator’s genuine opportunities to promote settlement. Arrange independent information production supporting labour market negotiations in connection with the mediator’s office.
Ensure the adequacy of the occupational safety authority’s resources. Increase compensation for illegal dismissal.
Remove barriers to employment for those with partial or limited work ability and disabled people. Ensure just pay for these groups and legislate a hiring quota for public bodies – an obligation to hire a certain number of disabled and partially work-able employees.
Develop transport services for people with mobility impairments so that travelling to or during the working day does not become an obstacle to working. Develop workplace adjustment support to meet real needs.
Ensure that work placements pay wages corresponding to the level of competence and that it is worthwhile for employers to hire trainees.

Ensuring meaningful and good working life for all

Economic and technological transitions have increased the pressures and mental burden of working life. The importance of coping at work, meaningful work, and continuous learning is growing. The Greens wants to promote sustainable working careers, non-discriminatory working life, and meaningful work for all.

Bringing Flexibility to Work

Promote a broader societal transition to shorter working hours. Make it easier to work part-time and have the opportunity to reduce working hours in different life situations.
Expand the possibility of flexible working hours, especially in expert work, and enable the agreement on flexible hours in collective agreements.
Enact a package supporting location-independent work, which ensures occupational wellbeing and safety in remote work and makes it easier to work from abroad as well.
Improve the recognition of competence for those in working life, continuous learning, and the opportunity to build competence. Increase conversion and update training and career guidance, and support competence development at workplaces.

Improving Wellbeing at Work

Reverse the trend of mental health-based sick leaves and disability pensions by supporting the opportunities of mental health rehabilitees to remain in and return to working life.
Ensure that workers have a genuine opportunity to detach from work during their free time and that everyone has an annual opportunity for restorative leave regardless of the form of work.
Change the accrual of annual leave to 2.5 days from the very start of employment. Pay annual leave through social insurance.
Ensure that the minimum protections of the EU Working Time Directive are realised regardless of the form of work.
Legislate on the prevention of psychological strain in the Occupational Health Care Act and the Occupational Safety and Health Act.

4 HUMAN RIGHTS, RULE OF LAW, AND FEMINISM AS PROTECTION FOR ALL – ERADICATING DISCRIMINATION AND DEFENDING DEMOCRACY

Equality, non-discrimination, indivisible human rights, democracy, and the rule of law are at the core of Green politics. They are values that the Greens always holds on to.

The far right and authoritarian forces are strengthening globally, which is also visible in Finland. At present, the curtailment of human rights and freedom is being demanded in the name of national security. We are having to defend the progress already made on equality while borders are being closed to those seeking help and surveillance and control are being increased.

The Greens defends the rights of women, disabled people, immigrants, the LGBTQ+ community, and other minorities without compromise. It is not enough to hold on to current rights; equality must be improved and discriminatory and racist structures dismantled.

The Greens is a feminist party. Feminism aims for everyone the freedom to be themselves and the active dismantling of the power structures that cause societal inequality. Green feminism is intersectional – recognising and dismantling multidimensional discrimination. Finland is one of the most dangerous countries in Europe for women and girls, which is due in particular to intimate partner and sexual violence. The attitudes that do not respect the limits of bodily integrity, that trivialise sexual harassment, and that blame victims must finally be dismantled.

Finland is also one of the most racist countries in Europe. The Greens demands strict action against racism and hate speech and concrete anti-racist measures.

Although Finland is still one of the world’s most stable rule-of-law states, the situation has deteriorated here too. The examples of the United States and Hungary show that authoritarian right-wing groups, when they come to power, undermine the foundations of the rule of law. The Greens wants to strengthen democracy and the rule of law through good governance, law enforcement, a strong civil society, and press freedom.

Promoting equality, non-discrimination, and people’s freedom to be themselves

Everyone must be able to participate in society without discrimination, fear, or invisibility. The Greens promotes policy that actively addresses racism, discrimination, and inequality. Finnish legislation contains structures that increase and maintain inequality, preventing in particular the realisation of the rights of minority groups. Rights must be visible in everyday life as services, inclusion, and safety – not just as principles on paper.

Protecting Minority Rights

Strengthen the resources of the Non-Discrimination Ombudsman and the Equality Ombudsman to combat all forms of discrimination.
Increase impact assessment for different minority groups in legislation, government programmes, and budgeting so that the assessment steers decision-making to strengthen equality.
Raise the obligations and supervision of the Non-Discrimination Act to the level of the Equality Act.
Guarantee disabled people and those in need of special support the right to a life on their own terms, services, and full participation in all areas of life.
Fully implement the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities and implement the recommendations of the Convention’s supervisory body.
Enact a binding and sanctioned Accessibility and Availability Act covering the physical, psychological, social, and digital environment already in the planning and implementation phase.
Implement the recommendations of the Sámi people’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Safeguard the Sámi languages and culture. Ensure the operational capacity of the Sámi Parliament through adequate funding.
Ratify ILO Convention 169 on Indigenous Peoples and promote the adoption of the Nordic Sámi Convention to safeguard the land and cultural rights of the Sámi. Require prior consent for logging and land use projects in the Sámi homeland.
Improve the status of linguistic minorities. Enable more than one home language in the population information system. Enact separate language laws for Karelian and Romani and implement the measures of revitalisation programmes.
Raise awareness of Sámi, Karelian, and Romani culture as part of school education.
Act actively to strengthen the equal and constitutional status of the Swedish language as Finland’s second national language alongside the Finnish language.

Placing Worldviews on Equal Footing and Strengthening Freedom of Religion and Religious Peace

Ensure that worldviews have an equal status in relation to the state.
Combat hate speech, threats, and harassment directed at religious communities and individuals. However, safeguard freedom of speech to criticise religions.
Enable independent joining, changing, and leaving of a religious community from the age of 15.
Create means to identify and address spiritual violence, honour violence, and coercive control in religious and other communities. Support opportunities to leave communities that restrict human rights.
Strengthen the fundamental and human rights perspective in worldview education. Move towards a common worldview subject, and in the meantime ensure every pupil’s freedom to choose their worldview subject.

Promoting gender equality

Everyone has the right to determine their own body, gender, and life, and to live in safety from violence and discrimination. The Greens is committed to strengthening the recognition of gender and sexual diversity, promoting equality in working life and education, and preventing and combating intimate partner and sexual violence. Rights must be realised in legislation, services, and the justice system on an equal and timely basis. Equality and bodily integrity are not matters of opinion but political obligations.

Strengthening Everyone’s Right to Bodily Autonomy and Gender Self-Determination

Draw up a rainbow political action programme that strengthens the realisation of LGBTQ+ people’s rights across all administrative branches.
Reform the Equality Act to take into account the diversity of gender, sexual orientation, family situations, and family formation.
Introduce a legal third gender. Reduce unnecessary gender classification in official contexts and investigate the abandonment of legal gender marking.
Ensure adequate specialist healthcare services for trans people without unreasonable waiting times.
Lower the age limit for confirming legal gender from 18 to 15 years. Ensure access to puberty-delaying treatment for trans youth.
Ban conversion practices – so-called conversion therapies – that aim to change an individual’s sexual orientation or gender identity through psychological violence.
Ban female genital mutilation and other non-medically necessary genital surgeries on children, and safeguard the rights of intersex people.
Introduce free contraception for young people under 25, covering all modern contraceptive methods.
Strengthen the right to abortion. Enable abortion at one’s own decision, without separate justification, up to 18 weeks of gestation.
Lower the age limit for voluntary sterilisation to 18 years.

Advancing Gender Equality

Assess the gender impacts of the government programme. Use gender-informed budgeting and monitoring, making concrete changes on their basis to improve equality.
Identify gendered vulnerabilities and promote gender sensitivity in education and social and health services. Invest in raising the competence level of comprehensive school-age pupils and dismantle gender divisions in education.
Improve the wellbeing of boys and men, for example by encouraging fathers to take parental leave, investing in emotional literacy education, and funding anti-misogyny work.
Dismantle the gendered nature of labour markets and ensure genuine pay equality.
Promote stronger wage growth for low-paid, typically female-dominated sectors compared to other sectors.
Strengthen study guidance. Prevent the gendered segregation of study and career choices by gender and social and cultural background.
Require pay transparency and equal pay through legislation.
Address pregnancy and parental leave discrimination by, among other means, strengthening the employment security of those in fixed-term positions and promoting women’s career development and placement in leadership positions.

Preventing Intimate Partner Violence and Protecting Victims

Ensure permanent and adequate funding for the prevention and identification of violence and for helping victims and rehabilitating perpetrators, free of charge, nationwide. Enshrine the prevention of intimate partner violence as a statutory task of municipalities and wellbeing services counties.
Increase understanding of the different forms of gender-based and minority-targeted violence in the training of police, prosecutors, judges, and correctional services professionals.
Embed multiprofessional risk assessment as part of all authorities’ cooperation with intimate partner violence victims.
Train authorities to identify the various manifestations of misogyny so that violence against women and the threat of it can be addressed more effectively than before.
Address digital harassment and stalking by creating clear and uniform guidelines for police, prosecutors, and other authorities.
Legislate coercive control – long-term psychological violence and the systematic restriction of a victim’s activities and freedom – as a criminal offence.
Make it easier and faster to obtain restraining orders and tighten their supervision.
Comply with the obligations of the Istanbul Convention on preventing and combating violence against women and girls.
Raise violence prevention as a goal for the entire child and youth sector, engaging organisations alongside education and social and health services, recognising the over-representation of boys and men as perpetrators and targets of physical violence.
Increase consent education at all educational levels and age-appropriately strengthen children’s and young people’s understanding of consent and safety skills.
Require police to investigate sexual and domestic violence offences as urgent and to take effective protective measures to ensure victims’ safety.
Address the deficiencies in sexual offences legislation regarding penalties to reflect the gravity of the act and the violation of the victim’s human dignity.
Increase shelter places and strengthen the accessibility of shelters and support services also for men and minorities, such as disabled people.
Identify disability-specific violence, prevent it, and intervene.
Actively root out honour-related violence and improve authorities’ competence in identifying the phenomenon. Enact a separate provision in the Criminal Code criminalising forced marriage, taking into account all the special features of forced marriage.
Secure funding for organisations doing anti-violence work.
Promote the identification of female genital mutilation and address it, among other means, by training social and health, and education sector professionals.
Update the law on pimping to improve the legal status of sex workers and ensure equal opportunities for practising the profession.
Enshrine femicide in the Criminal Code. Intentional killing of a woman because of her gender is recognised as a separate criminal offence, carrying a penalty equivalent to that for murder.

Strengthening the rule of law, democracy, and everyday security

Everyone must have the opportunity to obtain justice. The actions of authorities must be based on law, openness, and independent supervision. These rule-of-law principles are no longer self-evident, and even in Finland the structures of the rule of law must be strengthened and attempts to undermine them resisted. The Greens commits to defending rule-of-law principles even in times of crisis. True democracy only works if people are interested in and can influence decision-making. In particular, the participation of children, young people, minorities, and immigrants must be strengthened, and the operating conditions of organisations and civil movements must be maintained. Elections and the party system also need reforms that increase representativeness and transparency.

Safeguarding the Rule of Law and Improving Lawmaking

Carry out a “rule-of-law stress test” assessing how well Finland’s rule-of-law structures can withstand the political pressure placed on them to weaken the rule of law and human rights.
Draw up a fifth national fundamental and human rights action programme and a cross-term human rights report, taking particular account of the recommendations of international human rights monitoring bodies.
More strongly enshrine judicial independence in the Constitution than at present.
Ensure the quality and openness of lawmaking by allocating adequate resources to it. Secure adequate consultation periods.
Improve courts’ ability to decline to apply legislation that conflicts with the Constitution. Remove the requirement from the Constitution for the conflict to be manifest.
Secure the operating conditions of pluralistic and independent news media in all circumstances.
Establish an independent body outside the police to investigate police crimes.

Increasing People’s Participation and Improving Civil Society’s Operating Conditions

Lower the voting age and eligibility to stand for election to 16 in all elections and citizens’ initiatives.
Increase resources for conducting elections so that everyone has adequate information and access for standing as a candidate, participating in electoral work, and voting.
Combat harassment of candidates and campaign workers in elections and other political activities. Take into account that harassment is particularly directed at women, young people, and representatives of minorities.
Require Parliament to process citizens’ initiatives to completion, even across electoral terms. Create binding time limits within which citizens’ initiatives must be processed.
Strengthen dialogue between citizens and authorities. Establish citizens’ assemblies, panels, and assemblies as well as participatory budgeting as permanent parts of societal influence.
Promote family-friendly practices at all levels of political activity, for example by ensuring functioning substitution arrangements and providing childcare during meetings.
Secure funding for women’s political organisations and recognise their central role as promoters of democracy and equality.
Strengthen the status of youth councils, disability councils, and other advisory bodies in municipalities and wellbeing services counties.
Increase young people’s participation at all levels of decision-making. Give youth councillors the right of initiative and use student councils and other channels natural for young people. Guarantee youth council representatives the right to speak and be present in municipal and wellbeing services county bodies.
Strengthen civil society by improving dialogue between organisations and decision-makers and ensuring adequate and long-term funding. Secure civil society’s participation opportunities in lawmaking.
Make it easier for associations to raise their own funds by reducing bureaucracy and updating the fundraising legislation while protecting donors’ legal security. Extend the tax exemption on donations to cover all non-profit associations.

Developing the Electoral and Party System

Reform the electoral system so that the proportionality of elections and regional representation are guaranteed better than at present.
Resist the introduction of electronic voting in elections for security reasons and to preserve the secrecy of the vote.
Strengthen the supervision of campaign financing and legislate penalties for negligence. Make advance notification of campaign financing mandatory. Introduce a per-candidate election campaign spending cap.
Ensure that parties that are authoritarian, oppose democracy, or accept political violence are not accepted into the party register.

Improving Everyday Security

Strengthen the resources of the justice system from the investigation and solving of crimes through to the legal process and criminal sanctions. Shorten the duration of legal proceedings.
Moderate legal costs so that everyone has a genuine opportunity to seek justice without undue financial risk.
Focus police resources on preventive work and combating intimate partner violence. Increase sentences for rape offences and strengthen the combating of online crimes against children.
Ensure that help is available in emergency and crisis situations. Increase the resources of the rescue services and emergency response centres.
Prevent violent radicalisation and organised crime and support disengagement from them through multiprofessional cooperation.
Legislate targeted harassment (maalittaminen) and hate speech as criminal offences. Take into account that hate speech is particularly directed at women and minorities.
Safeguard the confidentiality of communications and other fundamental rights when deciding on internal security and law enforcement measures. Prevent general and untargeted mass surveillance, such as the use of facial recognition technology.
Make it easier for those over-indebted to manage their situation. Raise the protected amount in garnishment and direct garnishment payments primarily to the principal and secondarily to interest and collection costs. Shorten the limitation period for private individuals’ debt and make accessing debt adjustment easier.

5 CULTURE IS THE HEART OF SOCIETY – INVESTING IN EDUCATION, SCIENCE, AND CULTURE

Finland’s success has been based on equal and free education that keeps everyone on board. In a changing world, education and culture are prerequisites for social stability, resilience, and democracy. For the Greens, culture is also an end in itself.

The Greens demands that everyone can pursue the education they want, develop themselves, and change the direction of their life knowing that society’s safety net holds. Education pays for itself when we dare to invest in it. We want to raise Finns’ educational attainment, learning outcomes, and research to the international forefront.

The Greens wants to raise the appreciation of culture to the level it deserves. At the heart of Green cultural policy are freedom and intrinsic value of the arts, the diversity and equal accessibility of cultural services, and the livelihood of artists and other cultural sector professionals. Culture is also an increasingly important resource for a sustainable economy.

The Greens promotes a society in which researched knowledge is valued and widely used in political decision-making and public debate. We want to secure stable, adequate, and predictable funding for research and innovation. New technology brings both opportunities and risks. The Greens wants to harness technological development to serve a good life, freedom, democracy, and sustainable development.

Ensuring a good educational path for everyone

In the Greens’ view, high-quality and equal education is the foundation of Finnish society and a prerequisite for a sustainable future. Every child and young person has the right to a safe and high-quality educational path from early childhood education to higher education. Long-term funding, a good working environment, and the wellbeing of pupils, students, and staff are prerequisites for learning.

Improving Education Funding and Sector Salaries

Create a long-term funding and future programme for education. In the long term, raise education funding to at least the Nordic level.
Strengthen the basic funding of all levels of education. R&D&I funding cannot replace basic funding.
Through education, working conditions, and pay, ensure that professionals are available in sufficient numbers in schools and kindergartens. Establish a teacher register to ensure adequate teacher numbers, qualifications, and continuing education and forecasting data.
Ensure that the wellbeing of staff is taken care of at all levels of education, as the wellbeing of staff in turn enables the delivery of quality education.

Supporting Children’s and Young People’s Educational Paths

Build a seamless learning support system from early childhood education to higher education.
Legislate binding maximum group sizes.
Raise early childhood education participation rates and make early childhood education compulsory from the age of five. Particularly encourage early childhood education for under-fives whose language development it supports, and increase Finnish as a second language instruction in early childhood education.
Address bullying and school violence immediately, effectively, and through multiprofessional cooperation. Strengthen school and outreach youth work.
Develop school staff’s competence to meet pupils with neurodiversity, mental health challenges, crises, and bullying situations.
Strengthen preparatory training for qualification education (TUVA) and initiate the legislative preparation for remedial education.
Ensure that support continues uninterrupted at transition stages so that no child or young person falls off the educational path and that information transfers smoothly between educational institutions.
Dismantle the gendered segregation of educational and career choices.
Prevent regional and inter-school inequality by supporting with adequate equality funding the activities of kindergartens and schools in areas with low educational attainment, high unemployment, many foreign-language speakers, and low-income families.
Guarantee linguistic skills for every pupil and student by strengthening both the learning of national languages and the quality and availability of mother tongue instruction.
Create uniform criteria for referring pupils to and departing from Finnish/Swedish as a second language instruction and narrow differences between municipalities in the quality and availability of instruction.

Developing Upper Secondary Education

Guarantee every young person upper secondary education by providing individual, timely, and effective support for those at risk of falling outside the educational path.
Fix the funding system for general upper secondary education and remove the annual per-unit fee cutter that weakens funding.
Reduce the performance-orientation of upper secondary education and strengthen its general educational character.
Raise the quality, appreciation, and funding of vocational education and training, and ensure that it provides adequate qualifications for further study. Increase contact teaching, especially for pupils subject to compulsory education.
Ensure that there are diverse and free routes into higher education that take into account different economic and life situations. Ease the first-time applicant rule so that first-time applicant status is retained for the first year of study.
Support young people in finding their own field and in particular promote the transition of vocational students to higher education. Offer an education voucher for young people who have not obtained a study place.

Raising educational attainment and strengthening education quality

Finland’s success is based on high competence, whose cornerstone is universally accessible, free education up to the higher education level. Higher education must be high-quality, free, and based on autonomous higher education institutions. Separate higher education acts guarantee universities and universities of applied sciences their own clear roles and tasks, enabling cooperation. We want to raise Finland’s educational attainment back to the top of the world and ensure that everyone can develop their competence and educate themselves throughout life. The goal is for everyone to have some post-secondary qualification.

Raising Educational Attainment

Draw up a long-term funding and action plan to raise the higher education level to 50 per cent of young age cohorts by 2030 and to progress towards 60 per cent.
Ensure that education funding does not decline as age cohorts shrink, but that per-pupil and per-student funding grows.
Invest in reading and writing skills at all levels of the education system.
Strengthen basic skills and reading in basic education and ensure the adequacy of textbooks.
Ensure that qualification education is free for students at all levels. Abandon tuition fees for students from outside EU and EEA countries.
Increase the number of starting places, taking into account both regional and sector-specific needs. Ensure that the increase in starting places is implemented without compromising the quality and rigour of teaching.
Dismantle the heritability of education and increase the participation of under-represented groups, such as young people with immigrant backgrounds, in higher education.
Prevent school dropout due to health, life management, or other challenges by offering young people bridging education, youth work, and various service forms that help in completing studies and graduating with a meaningful qualification.
Guarantee every young person the genuine opportunity to pursue upper secondary school education regardless of where they live.

Reforming Continuous Learning Structures

Introduce a reformed, incentivising retraining support targeted especially at updating competence and changing fields.
Make changing fields flexible and smooth for those who already have a study right or have already completed a degree.
Develop nationally recognisable educational packages shorter than a degree and easy to complete alongside a working career to meet the labour market’s competence needs.
Establish a publicly administered grant system respecting the autonomy of higher education institutions to support students arriving from abroad. Grants are directed especially at students fleeing persecution and violence from their country of origin.

Making Finland an attractive hub for free science and research

At the heart of Green science policy are curiosity and enlightenment, freedom of science and its intrinsic value, equal access to knowledge, and the sustainable livelihood of scientists. By taking care of the freedom of science, research funding, and an atmosphere that values researched knowledge, Finland has all the prerequisites to continue being a high-competence society drawing on science and research that attracts international talent and investment. We demand a society in which decision-making and public debate is based on researched knowledge.

Strengthening Free Science

Defend and strengthen the autonomy of universities. Ensure that research is based on the expertise of the scientific community and that political direction does not curtail the freedom of science.
Raise research, development, and innovation funding in accordance with the R&D&I Funding Act towards the 4 per cent of GDP target by 2030. Strengthen tax incentives as needed to ensure private R&D&I funding.
Ensure sustainable operating conditions for universities and research institutions through long-term, predictable, and transparent funding.
Strengthen core funding relative to competitive research funding. This strengthens the autonomy of universities and safeguards long-term research and teaching tasks.
Develop the funding models of universities and universities of applied sciences so that they emphasise the universities’ own strategic priorities more broadly instead of excessive output measures.
Take into account different sectors in a balanced way in R&D&I investments and strengthen the share of higher education institutions in R&D&I funding. Encourage higher education institutions to form diverse partnerships with various actors. Take into account in directing investments the impact of regional higher education institutions and upper secondary education on regional development.
Make publicly funded research openly available.

Making the Researcher Career Path Attractive

Develop the researcher career model to be clear, incentivising, and internationally competitive so that researchers can focus on research and teaching in a long-term way. Increase the share of permanent positions and improve the social security and healthcare of grant-funded researchers.
Promote the internationalisation of the scientific community by enabling the granting of a residence permit for the entire duration of the research project or doctoral work. Build quality English-language and bilingual degree programmes at higher education institutions, increase cooperation with international actors, and improve the integration of families into Finnish society.
Make it easier to combine student exchange and Finnish or Swedish language studies as part of degrees.

Investing boldly in culture

Culture is the foundation of a living and thinking society. Its diversity requires policy that recognises the different operating logics and needs of different art and cultural fields. The Greens’ goal is a diverse and vibrant cultural offering in which everyone has the right and opportunity to participate in experiencing and creating culture. Culture and the creative industries are also important for the economy and community. It is justified to support culture with public funds while also improving the conditions for private funding of culture taking into account the special characteristics of the fields. With bold investments, we secure the operating conditions of cultural sector professionals from the game and film industry to traditional arts and strengthen high-level competence and cultural exports.

Improving Cultural Funding and Operating Conditions

Raise public funding for culture and develop cultural funding structures as a whole. In the long term, grow the state arts and culture budget to one per cent of the total budget.
Strengthen the copyright of arts and culture creators and secure appropriate compensation also for material used by artificial intelligence.
Take care of the one-percent-for-art principle in public construction and investigate whether the principle can be extended to private construction as well.
Support small entrepreneurship in the cultural sector. Increase state artist grants and improve the social security of culture grant recipients. Launch a pilot artist salary scheme.
Invest in the availability of spaces for making and experiencing art and culture.
Support the accessibility of culture and art and the vitality of the sector by lowering VAT on cultural services and reducing the VAT rate on books, textbooks, and periodicals to zero.
Increase funding for free culture and organisations so that the cultural activities dependent on them can be maintained and expanded.
Take care of the network and funding of liberal adult education. Ensure library accessibility and develop libraries as cultural centres for all citizens.
Create operational models for organising and developing on a national basis the volunteer-based cultural mentoring activity that encourages people to engage with culture.
Expand the culture voucher pilot nationwide. Grant every young person an annual culture budget for free use on cultural services.
Guarantee everyone’s right to art and culture also as a creator by taking care of the quality and accessibility of basic arts education and securing the conditions for people’s self-directed cultural activities.
Take care of children’s and young people’s access to culture throughout the country. Ensure the continuation of the Taidetestaajat cultural education programme reaching all eighth graders.
Take culture and the creative industries into account as part of industrial policy. Also invest in the export of art and culture as they are growth sectors.
Ensure that creators receive just compensation regardless of the distribution platform by introducing, for example, a streaming services levy.
Safeguard Yleisradio’s (Finland’s public broadcaster) operations throughout the country, in minority languages, and in respect of accessible cultural services.
Ensure the regional accessibility of culture and take care of the funding of regional cultural institutions.

Harnessing new technology democratically, safely, and sustainably

The Greens wants to harness technology to build a modern welfare state, secure fundamental rights, and solve the crises facing society. Technological development has and will continue to have wide-ranging effects across all of society. Seizing the opportunities it creates and responding to the threats it poses requires forward-looking and knowledge-based policy that takes into account the environmental impacts of technology and promotes equality and non-discrimination. Technology is also an increasingly central part of international power competition. Finland must take a role as a responsible user of technology and a trustworthy, democracy-and-human-rights-respecting developer and supplier of technology. In particular, the development of artificial intelligence is advancing so rapidly that alongside its opportunities, new risks must be identified and prepared for proactively.

Harnessing the Opportunities of Technology

Develop public digital services in a human-centred way. Produce services more efficiently and with higher quality, making them easy to find, smooth, and accessible. Secure traditional service access for those for whom digital services are not possible or appropriate.
Develop proactive services using data and AI that reduce the administrative burden and client effort. When a matter requires case-by-case discretion, always ensure that a human makes the decision. Guarantee that an automated decision can always be subject to human review.
Ensure that AI systems, data produced across different administrative branches, and next-generation robotics can be safely deployed and used in the public sector.
Strengthen public debate and decision-makers’ competence regarding the rapid development and impacts of technologies.
Create future technological competitiveness by strengthening Finland’s position as an attractive country for developing and commercialising innovations based on critical technologies.

Managing the Risks of New Technology

Strengthen the market and competitiveness of European digital solutions through public procurement.
Require public services to be independent of digital solutions from outside the EU. Prefer the use of free and open-source software in public administration.
Publish information systems produced with public money using open licences as a matter of principle.
Ensure that the EU bears global responsibility for maintaining secure communication channels. Resist solutions that weaken encryption technologies, such as law enforcement backdoors, while acknowledging that platforms still have a responsibility for the moderation of and transparency around the content distributed on them.
Strengthen platforms’ responsibility to address addictive mechanisms and filter and moderate harmful content. Create regulation to prevent consumers from being locked into specific platforms.
Strengthen media and digital literacy. Support children and young people in the digital age by limiting the use of technology that is harmful to learning and wellbeing in schools. Implement online service age limits at the EU level uniformly and with respect for privacy. Ensure that children’s and young people’s fundamental democratic rights are not jeopardised.
Expand informational self-determination – everyone’s right to control data concerning themselves.
Curb the harmful impacts of AI on the environment, copyright, and labour markets through regulation and taxation, primarily at the EU level. Ensure the just distribution of AI’s benefits in society.
Legislate an obligation to distinguish potentially deceptive AI-generated content from human-generated content. Ban the use of another person’s voice or likeness in deepfakes without consent.
Update legislation to address technology-mediated violence and all deepfakes, but especially those of a sexual nature.
Ensure that public administration transitions to quantum- and AI-proof encryption methods to prevent the emergence of new vulnerabilities in information systems.
Ensure the transparency and accountability of AI both in public administration and in the operations of large private AI systems. Guarantee everyone’s right to understand AI-assisted decisions concerning them.
Promote international agreements to monitor and regulate the development of the most capable AI systems and secure humanity’s control over AI development. In the short term, strong regulatory and oversight mechanisms must be created to curb the use of AI in developing biological and chemical weapons and cyberattacks.

6 SUSTAINABLE POPULATION DEVELOPMENT – A GOOD LIFE FOR EVERYONE EVERYWHERE IN FINLAND

Finland must be an open and just country where one can move to any region and live a good everyday life, regardless of the reason for arrival, whether it be peace and safety, education, work and livelihood, or love, family, and loved ones.

Finland’s population is changing and moving. Large age cohorts are ageing, the birth rate is at a low level, and the population is growing from people moving to Finland from abroad. In domestic migration, people and jobs are increasingly concentrated in growth centres, and in many regions the population is growing older and ageing. In one place service demand is growing too fast, and in another there are not enough users, which challenges service organisation.

The Greens wants to enable a good and ecologically sustainable life throughout the country. We see the diversity of different regions as a strength and want to develop regions based on their own strengths. At the same time, we recognise the different challenges of growth centres and areas losing population. Remote work and multi-locality have also opened up new opportunities to balance regional development and reduce the environmental burden of mobility. At the same time, they can increase community and strengthen connections between different regions.

People move to Finland mainly for work, family reasons, and study. Finland needs significant net immigration to balance the dependency ratio – the deficit of working-age people relative to the population outside working life resulting from shrinking age cohorts. It is sensible to invest in humane immigration policy that removes barriers to settling in Finland. We want Finland to be easy to move to and stay in for work, family, study, safety, or a new life.

Successful integration and equal opportunities are central for both the individual, families, and society. Strong investment in language education and the recognition of competence build pathways to good integration and working life. People’s attachment to communities increases the vitality, wellbeing, and functionality of regions and society.

Implementing sustainable regional and urban policy

Green regional policy relies on the strengths of regions. Supporting these can increase the vitality of regions. Multi-locality and remote work have brought new opportunities worth seizing. We want to ensure sustainable growth of urban regions by ensuring the preservation and increase of urban nature and pleasant residential environments. We prevent segregation by ensuring quality services and adequate affordable housing.

Leveraging Regional Strengths and Securing Services

Implement a just state transfer reform for municipalities and wellbeing services counties that takes into account differences in service needs and revenue bases, supports securing basic rights and services everywhere, and incentivises cooperation and sustainability-increasing investments.
Support research, education, business, and organisation activities based on regional strengths, promoting sustainability and just transformation in different parts of the country.
Create livelihood and income opportunities from nature conservation, restoration, decentralised energy production, and increasing self-sufficiency.
Promote sustainable cultural and nature tourism and enable municipalities to introduce a tourist levy.
Promote and maintain the sustainable recreational use of nature.
Create special economic zone legislation in Finland and promote special economic zones increasing the vitality of eastern Finland without weakening environmental regulation. Ensure that EU funding is directed to the entire eastern border.
Secure internet connections throughout Finland and develop digital, mobile, and remote services that free up resources for local services for those who need them most.
Enable multi-locality by defining a second address and secondary home municipality in legislation. The right to vote would remain, as required by the Constitution, in the primary home municipality, but part of the municipal tax could be directed to the secondary municipality. Take multi-locality into account also in the state transfer system.
Create boundary conditions for remote-connection-based teaching as a complement to in-person teaching. Improve opportunities to pursue upper secondary studies remotely.
Strengthen resident activities in suburbs and villages by enabling new kinds of cooperation between residents, associations, and businesses that can find local solutions increasing social and ecological wellbeing.

Building Ecologically and Socially Sustainable Cities

Prevent the segregation of residential areas by zoning diverse types of housing as well as services, livelihoods, and recreational and green areas in different areas. Support suburban development projects and invest in the diverse development of different city districts.
Restrain housing prices in large cities by zoning adequate housing and supporting affordable housing production with minimised environmental burden. Increase investment subsidies for special group housing and ensure an adequate accessible housing stock.
Create urban structures that make a sustainable lifestyle and emission-free mobility effortless.
Enable cities to introduce congestion charges and introduce them in the largest cities. Establish combustion engine vehicle restriction zones to reduce emissions and improve air quality.
Abandon mandatory parking norms (minimum parking requirements) that raise construction costs and shift the costs of car ownership onto non-car owners.
Introduce studded tyre bans in cities to reduce street dust and improve air quality.
Secure sustainable urban region development by continuing and developing land use, housing, and transport agreements (MAL agreements) and state grants between the state and municipalities. Make climate resilience and combating biodiversity loss a central objective of the agreements and raise state support to half the costs of rail solutions promoting sustainable transport.
Strengthen community, civic and resident activities, and crisis preparedness in different areas by supporting the development of communal and encounter-enabling spaces, cultural and civic activities, and cooperation between different actors according to local needs.
Preserve valuable cultural environments and valuable building stock from different eras.

Building an international Finland with a just immigration policy

Finland must be an open and accessible country, easy to integrate into regardless of home country and reason for entry. Immigration policy must be based on human rights, equality, and anti-racism, and linked to combating inequality and the climate crisis.

Making Immigration and Settling in Finland Smoother

Reform the Aliens Act and update other immigration and nationality legislation and official practices so that they safeguard fundamental and human rights, the best interests of the child, and the right to family life, study, and work.
Enable applying for citizenship after 3 years of residence and ease the requirements for obtaining citizenship.
Abandon the income thresholds and residency time requirements for family reunification. Moderate the income thresholds and requirements for other residence permits.
Make family reunification easier by enabling it also for partners in dating relationships and for recently reached adulthood children up to the age of 25, and for family members through visas, for example for grandparents and adult siblings.
Strengthen the legal protection of residence permit applicants and prevent exploitation especially in work- and study-based immigration. Criminalise the underpayment of migrant workers and improve the resources of the occupational safety authority.
Support international students in staying in Finland by improving language study and employment opportunities. Invest in keeping recent graduates in Finland.
Enable strong electronic service use with a personal identity code from the first day of immigration.

Acting Actively to Reduce Racism

Draw up an anti-racism action programme and monitor its implementation. The programme aims to increase education and action to reduce racism at all levels of society to change attitudes.
Introduce anonymous recruitment to hire staff with diverse backgrounds in public administration.
Prevent ethnic profiling and root out discriminatory attitudes by training immigration, border, and police authorities. Increase anti-racism work by security authorities.
Increase the knowledge base on hate crimes, improve their recording and reporting, and train authorities to identify hate crimes and meet their victims.

Promoting Integration, Language Learning, and Employment

Support integration consistently and with adequate resources. Bring together the expertise of education, employment, civil society, social services, and healthcare professionals to develop integration services. Procure integration services based on effectiveness and expert experience knowledge.
Introduce a job-seeking visa as a new immigration channel for a defined period without a job offer already known in advance.
Extend the transition period after the end of a work or other residence basis so that a person can look for work for a reasonable time or transition to another residence basis, such as family reasons or study.
Strengthen the recognition of foreign qualifications and previously acquired competence as part of the Finnish education system, and develop supplementary and conversion training opportunities.
Recognise immigrant women outside services as a special group and offer them tailored services and smooth routes to education and working life.
Provide practical language education for everyone regardless of the basis of entry, place of residence, or life situation. Remove bottlenecks in language testing and promote opportunities for language learning in connection with work.
Support organisations, arts and cultural actors, and sports and hobby clubs in including immigrants and strengthening inclusion and interaction.

Building a Functional and Humane Asylum System

Ensure the right to seek asylum and comply with the prohibition on refoulement and collective expulsion in all circumstances.
Grant asylum seekers the right to work and study from the submission of the application and allow flexible change of residence basis. Extend the duration of protection-based residence permits.
Shorten the maximum duration of detention and entry bans, increase alternatives to detention, and ban the detention of children and vulnerable persons in removal situations. Secure independent monitoring of returns.
Grant a residence permit and the right to work and study to long-term residents whose return is not possible.
Take into account violence experienced by immigrant women and intimate partner violence in residence permit grounds.

7 WORLD POLITICS IN CRISIS – DEFENDING PEACE AND HUMAN RIGHTS

The Greens is a feminist and peace-building party that aims for global equality, universal human rights, development, security, and peaceful existence within the sustainable limits of the planet. Succeeding in this requires a functioning international rules-based system and determined diplomacy and cooperation. Global cooperation is essential for combating the climate crisis and biodiversity loss. The UN is the most important structure and forum of international politics, and its status and operational capacity must be secured.

The European Union is Finland’s most important international community. A strong, united, and capable EU is in Finland’s interest and is a force for a better world. The EU must necessarily reform into a closer community to effectively address global and regional challenges, while taking care of democracy from the local level to Union decision-making. EU enlargement is a desirable development that stabilises the world and increases wellbeing.

The climate crisis, biodiversity loss, and the depletion of natural resources cause insecurity and feed tensions and conflicts. Halting environmental crises and improving the state of nature are therefore essential prerequisites for a safe future and an integral part of Green foreign and security policy. A large share of the world’s fossil energy, such as crude oil and natural gas, is produced in non-democratic countries, and ending dependence on fossil energy reduces problematic dependencies and weakens the power of these countries.

The world still suffers from deep inequality. Wealth, technology, the impacts of the climate crisis, security, and freedom are very unevenly distributed both between countries and within them. In many respects, development is heading in the wrong, increasingly unequal direction. Reversing this development is a necessary prerequisite when we aim for a better future. A sense of hopelessness is also the breeding ground for the far right and authoritarian power.

The Greens’ foreign policy is feminist. This means that foreign policy always has gender impacts that must be taken into account, from defence to trade policy and from development cooperation to diplomacy. The Greens ensures that the rights of women, girls, and minorities are promoted across the board in all foreign and security policy.

Global justice must guide all international policy, which also requires a greater weight for the Global South in international politics. The historical legacy of colonialism and its impact on the current challenges of many developing countries must be recognised, and the power structures maintaining global inequality dismantled.

Promoting open and free democracy also requires military capability and the ability to defend oneself. As a NATO member, Finland must have a credible ability to defend its own territory. Europe’s ability to defend itself and support its partners must also be strengthened rapidly. Most pressing right now is supporting Ukraine in defending itself against Russia and Ukraine’s development towards EU membership.

Defending human rights and a rules-based world

The starting point of Green politics is everyone’s equal human rights regardless of home country or place of birth. We build a rules-based, multilateral world and oppose imperialism, authoritarian power, and power politics. A prerequisite for Finland’s international credibility is the realisation of human rights at home and at its borders.

Restoring Faith in International Rules

Change the composition of the UN Security Council membership to be more representative of the entire world. Seek a permanent seat for the EU. Strengthen the power of the General Assembly relative to the Security Council.
Introduce a rule in international organisations whereby a member state that violates the organisation’s common fundamental principles temporarily loses its voting rights.
Reform European border policy by restoring respect for every person’s dignity and rights as its core value. Ensure that border security never prevents the right to seek asylum from being realised.
Strengthen the UN’s, EU’s, and NATO’s ability to act in accordance with the international responsibility to protect human rights to halt genocides. Thoroughly investigate war crimes and hold war criminals legally accountable for their actions.
Recognise the State of Palestine and demand an end to the genocide of Palestinians carried out by Israel. Demand that Israel also end the apartheid policy and the establishment of settlements in Palestinian territories.
Impose economic sanctions against regimes engaging in serious actions contrary to international law, human rights violations, or ecocide.
Strengthen the functioning of the International Criminal Court and add ecocide to the Court’s jurisdiction.
Promote rules- and treaty-based Arctic policy. Take care of the fragile nature of the region and the rights of indigenous peoples.
Support and strengthen the operating conditions of humanitarian and human rights organisations and ensure the access of aid, human rights observers, and the media to conflict zones.
Strengthen international regulation of space activities and promote the peaceful exploration and use of space.
Defend Åland’s international status as an autonomous and demilitarised region. Develop self-governance through constructive dialogue between Åland and Finland.
Demand an end to the genocide of Palestinians carried out by Israel. Demand that Israel also end the apartheid policy and the establishment of settlements in Palestinian territories.

Restricting Dangerous Weapons

Progress towards a nuclear-weapon-free world, ensuring that commitments to limitations and nuclear disarmament are made in a balanced way. Work to strengthen the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and promote policies excluding first strikes.
Sign the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. Do not allow nuclear weapons on Finnish soil.
Sign the international Cluster Munitions Convention.
Do not export weapons or dual-use technology to countries violating human rights or to conflict zones, with the exception of defence against armed attack under Article 51 of the UN Charter. Promote corresponding joint European regulation.
Legislate corresponding human rights guidelines for arms purchases as for exports.
Promote the international treaty system by supporting and strengthening arms control.
Urgently promote the restriction of autonomous weapons systems and other new weapons technologies through legally binding international agreements.
Increase Finland’s participation in landmine clearance operations. Include restoration of mined land in international demining cooperation agreements.
Return to the Ottawa Treaty banning anti-personnel mines.

Promoting global justice

Wealth, technology, natural resources, the impacts of the climate crisis and biodiversity loss, security, and human rights are distributed very unequally in the world. Correcting the situation requires determined action in the fields of development cooperation, diplomacy, trade, and security, as well as in responding to global environmental challenges.

Making the Green Transition Just

Make the Agenda 2030 Action Programme and the goals of the Paris Climate Agreement and the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework a reality in Finland and promote them globally. Create even more ambitious, science-based agreements as successors to these.
Promote effective and just international climate and nature policy. Emphasise the historical responsibility of wealthy countries to reduce emissions and combat biodiversity loss faster than poorer countries, and to support poorer countries in adapting to the climate crisis and compensating for damages.
Ensure the global sustainability of the green transition so that the transition in wealthy countries does not lead to human rights violations, increase emissions, or accelerate biodiversity loss elsewhere in the world.
Push for an international agreement on the criminalisation of ecocide – large-scale human-caused environmental damage.
Promote responsible and just global market economy. Support the dismantling of trade barriers, requiring strict environmental, human rights, and working conditions from international trade and economic agreements.
Combat tax havens and international tax competition that erodes the global tax base. Support the OECD’s and UN’s work on harmonising international corporate tax. Set a long-term goal of a 25 per cent global corporate tax rate. Distribute the corporate tax revenues of international large companies in a just way between their countries of operation.
Prepare for climate migration. Promote solutions that provide safety for those fleeing the consequences of the climate crisis. Promote the conclusion of an international agreement on climate migration.

Supporting the World’s Poorest and Most Vulnerable

Raise the share of development cooperation funding to at least the UN target of 0.7 per cent of gross national income by 2035 and increase the share directed to least developed countries to 0.2 per cent of gross national income.
Restore the funding of peace organisations and global education and communication NGO support (VGK support).
Conduct development cooperation in a long-term manner focusing on Finland’s values and strengths: children’s rights, strengthening the status and rights of women and girls, sexual and reproductive health and rights, the rights of persons with disabilities, education, peace and democracy, combating the climate crisis and biodiversity loss, sustainable economy, and decent work.
Respond to growing humanitarian aid needs by improving crisis responses and increasing humanitarian aid funding.
Commit to feminist foreign policy that promotes gender equality and the rights of women, girls, and minorities, based on human rights and the recognition of the many intersecting and overlapping grounds for discrimination. Increase women’s participation in decision-making in conflict prevention and resolution. Ensure that Finland is in all foreign policy an active counterforce to actors undermining gender equality.
Actively participate in both civilian crisis management and military crisis management. Ensure that crisis management operations have the prerequisites for success and the capacity to sustainably build peace and stability.
Raise the proportion of women in military crisis management operations to the UN’s target of 15 per cent.
Create safe and accessible routes to seek asylum in Europe. Promote just responsibility-sharing in receiving refugees and asylum seekers among EU member states. Ensure that asylum seekers’ legal protection is realised in the application process.
Gradually increase the refugee quota, first to 3,000 per year.

Building a strong Europe

A strong and united European Union with its partners is both in Finland’s interest and a force for a better world. The Greens’ goal is an ever closer, more capable, and larger European Union. Member states together can more effectively than individual countries address the climate crisis, democratic backsliding, and instability in our vicinity. That is why the Greens wants to deepen and expand European cooperation.

Expanding EU Citizens’ Rights and Democracy

Demand strong commitment from member states to democracy, the rule of law, human rights, and rules-based governance. More strongly address violations of these, for example by withholding funding.
Create EU-wide minimum standards for basic security and working life that guarantee the livelihood of the most vulnerable and the realisation of workers’ rights.
Keep EU-level digital regulation, supervision, and sanctions up to date so that the EU can also ensure that major technology companies operate in accordance with the law, protecting the future of democracy and fundamental and human rights.
Safeguard strong privacy and consumer protection in all member states.
Introduce pan-European electoral lists in European Parliament elections alongside national lists.
Safeguard civil society’s operating opportunities in the EU by defending freedom of association, freedom of expression, and the right to peaceful assembly, and by consulting civil society organisations in decision-making.

Strengthening the EU’s Economy and Security

Strengthen the EU’s decision-making capacity and budget while respecting the subsidiarity principle. Abandon unanimity requirements in EU foreign and security policy decisions and when deciding on the EU budget.
Increase the EU’s own resources, for example through a tax on digital waste and by expanding the coverage of EU carbon border adjustment measures.
Develop for the Union a permanent financing procedure enabling it to respond effectively to exceptional crises destabilising the economy when needed.
Improve the EU’s competitiveness by strengthening the single market, investing in research and development, and reducing problematic energy, raw material, and technology dependencies.
Ensure that EU industrial policy is strategic, competence-based, and sustainable. Dismantle internal EU protectionism.
Promote strong environmental regulation in the EU, emissions trading that rapidly reduces climate emissions, and ensure an ambitious level of the restoration regulation.
Strengthen the EU Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive by extending it to cover more companies by lowering the employee number threshold. Pay special attention to the realisation of human rights and environmental and animal welfare responsibility in long supply chains.
Develop the EU’s defence dimension, especially in joint procurement, military mobility, and demanding joint capabilities such as space, drone, and air defence capabilities, in new technologies, in responding to hybrid influence, in security of supply, and in comprehensive security.
Pursue responsible and just fiscal policy in the EU. Ensure the EU’s and the euro area’s ability to pursue counter-cyclical economic policy, complete the green transition, and strengthen strategic autonomy.
Support and promote EU enlargement. Create new pathways to full membership on a gradual basis where needed.
Increase Union funding for research and development and student exchange.

Supporting Ukraine in its defence and reconstruction

Russia’s criminal war of aggression and imperialism are a direct threat to European security. Ukraine must be supported in achieving a just and lasting peace and in rebuilding as a strong democracy.

Ensuring a Just Peace and a Flourishing Future

Ensure that peace in Ukraine is negotiated on Ukrainian terms and by Ukrainians. Continue and increase the delivery of military, humanitarian, and other requested assistance to Ukraine for as long as necessary.
Strengthen sanctions against Russia so that the country’s economic, political, and technical capacity to wage its war of aggression collapses.
Strengthen EU member states’ ability to fund additional defence and support for Ukraine, where needed, through EU mutual loans strengthening interdependence.
Participate in Ukraine’s security arrangements if needed, also with Finnish troops as part of a multinational operation, when conditions are met.
Promote Ukraine’s EU and NATO membership.
Support Ukraine’s reconstruction especially in the areas of education, the green transition, and democratic and rule-of-law development.
Recognise the State of Palestine.
Require the entire EU to comply without exception with all arrest warrants issued by the International Criminal Court.
Require the EU to freeze the Association Agreement with Israel and impose sanctions on Israel.
Ban the import of products from illegally occupied territories produced by the occupying power.

Safeguarding Finland’s defence capability and security of supply

Finland must be able to defend its citizens, democracy, and territorial integrity while respecting and complying with its human rights obligations. As a member of NATO and the EU, Finland’s defence is international: we must be ready to defend our allies. We are also preparing to defend Finland together with our allies. We want to reform conscription to be equal and correct the current deficiencies in the system. Alongside military defence capability, we must maintain security of supply and the will to defend the country. Ending dependence on fossil energy is a key security of supply goal in Finland and Europe. Investments in defence must not jeopardise a strong welfare state.

Investing in European Defence

Increase resources used for Finland’s defence, both for military national defence and comprehensive security, in accordance with identified needs and NATO commitments, using a national defence tax.
Strengthen Nordic and European defence cooperation and the role of European countries in NATO. Deliberately replace dependencies on the United States and Israel with European capabilities and defence industry. Conduct intensive bilateral cooperation with key allies and global partners as well as in smaller groups of countries.
Create through regular exercises and presence a seamless ability to receive allied assistance, develop our own capacity to help outside Finland’s borders, and strengthen presence in member states.
Harness nature restoration on the eastern border for defence. Create difficult terrain such as natural peatlands and forests.

Reforming Conscription

Reform conscription to be gender-neutral and cover the entire age cohort. Select an adequate portion of the age cohort to complete service through joint call-up.
Do not penalise conscientious objectors.
Increase the flexibility of civilian service and shorten its length.
Root out gender-based discrimination and other inappropriate conduct in the Defence Forces.
Strengthen the psychological support of conscripts and early identification of problems.
Increase the daily allowances of conscripts.
Reform the legislation concerning reservists to better take into account competence, training, motivation, and readiness for international service. Also better take into account situations where one or both parents of a young child are assigned to war-time units.

Building Future-Proof Security of Supply

Strengthen security of supply in parliamentary cooperation and together with allies. Ensure adequate self-sufficiency in energy and food production.
Ensure that Finland and Europe have adequate capability to manage critical digital systems and information for society. Require in public procurement solutions that support this goal. Prepare for situations in which key information systems or their data are not available.
Secure critical physical infrastructure and develop its resilience so that the effects of physical damage are limited and recovery is rapid. Keep key infrastructure and related partnerships in Finnish hands and direction.
Wean Finland off fossil fuels. Gradually fill security of supply stockpiles with synthetic fuels.
Reduce agriculture’s dependence on foreign fertilisers: increase nutrient recycling and begin the production of synthetic ammonia from clean hydrogen in Finland.
Reduce dependence on critical minerals and other imported raw materials through circular economy solutions and moderating consumption.
Safeguard the availability of medicines and security of supply in pharmaceutical logistics by strengthening EU pharmaceutical self-sufficiency.
Recognise the mental and physical capacity of Finns, social cohesion, and trust in society as part of crisis preparedness and comprehensive security.
Develop the civil society sector by harnessing voluntary crisis preparedness training that provides citizens with skills for preparing for, surviving, and providing assistance in exceptional circumstances.
Take into account in preparedness that crises affect people differently and that they have different needs based on age, gender, ability, language skills, and other factors. Prepare so that these factors do not prevent receiving help and support, finding safety, or helping others with one’s own resources.
Develop the central government’s proactive and planned preparedness for global crisis situations, such as pandemics, climate tipping points, or disruptions to the global economic system. Clarify the leadership of non-military crises in exceptional circumstances and take care of democracy.
Secure the civil defence resources needed by municipalities, wellbeing services counties, and key organisations.

Combating hybrid influence and improving digital security

Counter attempts by Russia and other foreign actors to destabilise Finnish society.
Increase funding for investigating cybercrime and for the prosecution service to hire cyberprosecutors.
Create a joint continuous vulnerability reward programme for central government to find security vulnerabilities before they cause harm.
Combat information influence. Strengthen the media literacy of the entire population through media education and training.
Create structures to counter the spread of false information and the silencing of journalists.

End of programme.