Finland’s conservatives to open coalition talks with far-right party
Finland’s conservative National Coalition party has said it will open formal coalition talks with the far-right, antiimmigration Finns party and two smaller groups to form the country’s next government.
Petteri Orpo, who is likely to succeed the Social Democrat Sanna Marin as prime minister after his NCP finished first in the 2 April elections, said negotiations would start on Tuesday and a government should hopefully be in place by June.
“We really have big challenges ahead, we have to make difficult decisions, we have to make savings, we have to make reforms, but I think they can be done and with this combination I think we can do it,” Orpo told reporters in Helsinki
on Thursday.
The NCP won 48 seats in the 200seat parliament, with the Finns party finishing on 46 and Marin’s centre-left SDP beaten into third place on 43 after a campaign marked by her rivals’ accusations of excessive state borrowing and public spending.
Orpo said his preferred partners were the Christian Democrats, who won five seats, and Swedish People’s party, which represents Finland’s minority Swedish-speaking population. Together, the four-party coalition would have a slim majority of 108 seats.
The talks are by no means certain to succeed. Orpo promised he would not “be making impossible demands of anyone”, but agreement could prove hard to find with the nationalist, Eurosceptic Finns party, particularly on immigration.
The prime minister-elect won the election on a campaign platform promising to radically rein in government spending – but also to increase selective, work-based immigration to help fill job vacancies and boost economic growth.
The Finns party vehemently opposes this, and also continue to favour leaving the EU as a long-term goal, and has said it wants to postpone Finland’s 2035 carbon neutral target - both of which could prove unpalatable to more moderate NCP MPs and voters.
Riikka Purra, the leader of the farright party – which was previously in government from 2015 to 2017 – conceded on Thursday there were “big differences” between the partners but the Finns party was determined to be part of a new coalition.
“Nothing so big that it can’t be negotiated,” Purra said, describing the immigration question as “a negotiation issue”. Marin, the world’s youngest prime minister when she took over in 2019, said she was concerned for the country’s future.
The SDP had taken part in exploratory talks over possibly forming a new coalition with the NCP, she said,
but differences over the conservative party’s plans to slash welfare, social security and education spending were insurmountable. “If cuts to spending are made on this scale, hardly any sector of society will be left untouched,” Marin told reporters. “I am worried for the livelihoods of those in the weakest position. This will leave a mark on Finnish society for a long time.”
Jussi Saramo of the Left Alliance, which was part of Marin’s outgoing coalition, called the putative new government “the most right-wing in our history”. If the talks fail, Orpo can still attempt to negotiate with other parties.