HUMANE,

EQUAL AND
FAIR FINLAND

WE HAVE A COMMON GOAL
2
Finnish people have the right to expect
that things will be better tomorrow than
they are today.

That the future will be better.

This is SDP’s most important goal.

We have a common goal.

Antti Rinne
SDP chair

3
IN THIS ELECTION, WE WILL DEFINE
FINLAND’S DIRECTION TOGETHER.
SDP’S WAY TO THE FUTURE
consists of work and growth,
ecologically sustainable develop-
ment and social justice. It is, once
again, time to build Finland into
a country that is humane, equal
and fair.
IN A HUMANE FINLAND,
everyone gets a living wage and
everyone is taken care of. In an
equal Finland, everyone has the
chance to get an education and
follow their dreams irrespective of
their age, life situation or income.
In a fair Finland, both people and
the environment thrive.
WE MUST GET TO WORK
NOW. We must fix what is bro-
ken. Develop what has to be done
better. Reform what is outdated.
Finland has always been able
to reform and it has been done
through joint agreements. We
social democrats want to continue
on this path.
4
WE FINNS ARE NOW FACED
WITH A CHOICE. Do we
choose the current way where
Finland’s success factors – equal
opportunities, small income dis-
parities, joint agreements, careful
legislative drafting and a high level
of well-being – are being labelled
as burdens? Or do we choose a
way to the future where we invest
in competence and education,
promote a fair working life and
create confidence in the future.
A way to the future where every-
one is carried along.
SDP’S CHOICE IS CLEAR.
Let’s choose the way toward a
more humane, equal and fair
Finland together. A Finland where
tomorrow is better than today.
We have a common goal.
SDP’S WAY TO THE FUTURE:

WORK AND GROWTH I page 7

ECOLOGICALLY SUSTAIN-
ABLE DEVELOPMENT I page

TAKING CARE
OF EVERYONE I page 19

FINLAND BIGGER THAN

ITS SIZE GLOBALLY I page 25

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6
 WORK AND GROWTH

THE WAY TO THE FUTURE:

WORK AND GROWTH

The Finnish welfare state is a success story. Finland’s
success story can continue in the future, too, when we
take care of the prerequisites of work and growth: quality
education, skilful workforce, and vibrant research and
innovation. We need investments in the future that
strengthen the conditions of economic and employment
growth and the sustainability of public finances in the long
term.

SDP’s goal is a working life where everyone can improve

their skills and rely on their livelihood. A working life like
that is equal and fair. A Finland like that generates work
and growth.

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This is how social democrats will promote work and growth in the coming parliamentary term:

EVERYONE HAS THE RIGHT TO

LEARN: LEARNING PATH 2030
Extend compulsory education to completing a secondary degree
and make studying on the secondary level, i.e. in upper secondary
schools and vocational schools, truly free.
Implement a human-centred reform of continuous learning to
respond to future competence needs of individuals and the labour
market. Prepare a model of a personal skills account, through
which people can acquire the training they require.
Make higher education possible for an ever greater number of
people. Increase the goal of completing a higher education degree
in young age groups to at least 50 percent. Continue the reform
of student admissions. Investigate the reasons behind poor pass
rates of higher education institutions and compile an operational
programme to enhance pass rates.
Restore the honour of science and research. Ensure an adequate
level of core funding so that researchers can focus on research.

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 WORK AND GROWTH

OBJECTIVE:
FAIR WORKING LIFE
Promote a meaningful, safe and productive working life by enhanc-
ing cooperation at the workplace. Reform the Law on Cooperation
and the Employment Contracts Act.
Remove unfounded wage differences between women and men.
Look into shifting to anonymous job applications in the public
sector to strengthen equality in recruiting.
Strengthen employment policy. Ensure the availability of employ-
ment services and adequate resources everywhere in Finland.
Ensure the supply of skilled labour from abroad. Streamline the
processes related to obtaining a work permit.
Enhance the integration of immigrants. Promote immigrants’ lan-
guage skills, professional capacity and knowledge about the society
through quality integration services.

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This is how social democrats will promote work and growth in the coming parliamentary term:

A VIBRANT FINLAND GENERATES

GROWTH AND OPPORTUNITIES
Support the growth of small businesses. Lighten the administra-
tive burden of small business owners by raising the VAT thresh-
old to 30,000 euros. Lower the income tax of small business
owners and relieve the cost of employment with, e.g. an earned
income support.
Implement a taxation reform over several years so that we can
ensure a stable and predictable operational environment for
businesses and citizens.
Draft a long-term plan to increase the level of research, devel-
opment and innovation funding in Finland to four percent of the
GDP by 2030. Increases in public investments encourage the
private sector to invest in RDI activity.

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 WORK AND GROWTH

Draft a urban policy strategy to respond to the challenges of urban-

isation. Develop more long-term agreements on land use, housing
and transport (MAL). The agreements must be made for twelve
years instead of the current four. The MAL agreements must be
extended to other urban areas as well.
Repair the road network in all of Finland and maintain functioning
connections also in rural areas. Recognise the significance of higher
education institutions and public research institutes to regional
prosperity.
Resolving big global challenges is an opportunity for Finnish inno-
vation policy. Climate change mitigation offers a growing global
market to business activities in that field.

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12
 ECOLOGICALLY SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT

THE WAY TO THE FUTURE:

ECOLOGICALLY
SUSTAINABLE
DEVELOPMENT
Climate change is the greatest threat to humanity. The mes-
sage from the Global Climate Report is clear: it is possible to
stop global warming at 1.5 degrees but it requires effective
and rapid actions everywhere in the world. SDP thinks that
in global climate work, Finland must have a small footprint
but a large handprint.

The change is also a possibility to Finland: a society with

resource wisdom generates a new kind of economic growth
and employment. However, the effects of the changes must
be distributed equally and fairly.

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This is how social democrats will promote ecologically sustainable development in the coming parliamentary term:

RESPONSIBLE
CLIMATE POLICY
Strive toward a carbon neutral Finland by 2035 and a clearly
carbon negative society by the middle of the century.
Increase the implementation rate of emission reductions. Make a
clear plan to give up the use of fossil fuels and peat for energy and
to strengthen the carbon sinks in forests and soils.
Ensure just transition. Everyone must participate in the building
of a carbon neutral and carbon negative society but the effects of
the change must be distributed equally and fairly.
Strengthen the status and funding of the Finnish Climate Change
Panel and establish a Finnish roundtable on climate change, the
task of which is to create a common vision about the transition to
a carbon neutral society at an accelerated speed.

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 ECOLOGICALLY SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT

ALL SECTORS TO JOIN

CLIMATE WORK
Develop value added tax into a tax form that supports sustainable
development and steers consumption and production to a more
sustainable direction. Lower tax rates must be applied to, for ex-
ample, circular economy services and sustainably produced food.
Strive toward Finland being among the first developed countries
to give up the energy use of coal. We must seek a new position
with unconventional solutions, developing smart electrical and
district heating grids, enhancing interconnections, and utilising
new energy storage possibilities.
Take care of the industrial operating conditions by ensuring
reasonable costs and competitiveness of electricity and transpor-
tation. In order to shift to a low-emission future, Finland needs an
industrial sector specific roadmap. With the help of a roadmap, it
is possible to define how the public sector can both accelerate the
shift toward zero emissions and ensure employment during the
shift.
Make investments in rail traffic. Better service in rail traffic steers
travel to electric public transport and contributes to reaching
emission targets and stopping climate change. To increase the
number of low and zero emission cars, there must be a clear
target, incentives and a transitional period.
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This is how social democrats will promote ecologically sustainable development in the coming parliamentary term:

SAFEGUARD BIODIVERSITY

Implement a restoration programme of degraded habitats that

meets international obligations.
Broaden the national park network and ensure the funding of the
forest biodiversity programme METSO. Complete the mire conser-
vation programme.
Draft a long-term programme to decrease the maintenance backlog
of Metsähallitus’ nature sights. Enhance the conditions of sustain-
able livelihoods, such as nature tourism, across Finland.

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 ECOLOGICALLY SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT

Implement a programme to promote circular economy. Resolve the

obstacles of plastic collection and set a goal to recycle half of plastic
packaging waste by 2025.
Protect the Baltic Sea. Reduce the amount of phosphorus that ends
up in the Baltic Sea. Start a reform programme of all wastewater
treatment plants to reduce nitrogen loads. Optimise the use of envi-
ronmental subsidy funds in agriculture by tightening their incentives
and targeting them to nutrient load risk areas.
Make it obligatory to mark all sales packaging with information
about how the package can be recycled. Ensure the availability of
consumer information related to ethical consumption and based on
research.

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18
 TAKE CARE OF EVERYONE

THE WAY TO THE FUTURE:

TAKE CARE OF
EVERYONE
In Finland, everyone is taken care of – irrespective of their
age, life situation or income level. In a humane society,
all of its members have confidence in the future. The
services of the society from health care to cultural and
educational services work and they are available at the right
time. Culture and education belong to all. SDP wants to
raise the competence level of all Finns, enhance the equality
of education and build a society where everyone can live a
good life. That is why we need fair and humane reforms in
social security and social welfare and health care service.

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This is how social democrats will promote care in the coming parliamentary term:

THE WORLD’S BEST COUNTRY FOR

Reform early childhood education. Restore the right to full-time
early childhood education to all children. Restore the ratio of
early childhood education personnel and children to a level that
guarantees the quality of early childhood education. Offer every
child over the age of 3 part-time early childhood education free of
charge in the coming parliamentary term. Extend the local school
policy to early childhood education appropriately.
Build a Finnish Icelandic model around schools. Shift to a flexible
school day nationally, which makes it possible to organise hobbies
during the school day. Reform morning and afternoon activities
and link them as parts of the flexible school day. Implement a
hobby guarantee, i.e. the possibility to have a hobby for every
child.
Enhance the availability of services targeted for families with
children, such as home help services. Secure the resources of child
protection and reduce poverty of families with children.
Draft a national child strategy based on human and basic rights.
Implement a child impact assessment tool that looks at, in partic-
ular, the income effect of decisions for families with children, into
systematic use.

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 TAKE CARE OF EVERYONE

CARRY EVERYONE ALONG

Prevent social exclusion of young people. Implement SDP’s Youth
Guarantee 2.0 and strengthen the operation of One-Stop Guid-
ance Centres. Secure adequate resources for secondary vocational
education and training and upper secondary education. Reform
the contents of secondary education to respond to the needs of
the changing working life and invest in the quality of secondary
education.
Raise the level of student financial aid to the early 2017 level and
apply annual indexation to it.
Promote the realisation of human rights, whether it comes to pre-
venting intimate partner violence, enhancing the rights of sexual
and gender minorities or strengthening children’s rights.
Raise the income of low-income pensioners, who earn less than
1,400 euros per month, by 100 euros. Make customer payments
in social welfare and health care services reasonable. Combine the
patient contribution payment limits of customer payments, medi-
cation and travel expenses.
Enhance services for older people by developing new concepts
and staff competence. Facilitating the work of those working in
services for older people and a humanely sustainable care of the
elderly require an adequate number of staff doing the work.

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22
 TAKE CARE OF EVERYONE

FINLAND NEEDS REFORMS

Implement a flexible family leave reform. Take various types of
families and situations into account in the reform. The starting
point in the reform must be a child-specific idea of a family leave
that takes into account one-parent families, same-sex parent
families, and adoptive families.
Reform social security according to the General Security model
so that it becomes simpler and more flexible. Simplify the social
security system by combining benefits and clarifying their assess-
ment basis. Harmonise the minimum levels of income-related
benefits so that they guarantee adequate security.
Reform social welfare and health care. Implement a treatment
time guarantee, according to which non-urgent treatment must
be available within one week. Secure access to services according
to the treatment and care time guarantee ultimately with service
vouchers and other outsourced services. Strengthen primary
health care by employing 1,000 new doctors or nurses. Enhance
the availability of mental health services.

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 FINLAND BIGGER THAN ITS SIZE GLOBALLY

THE WAY TO THE FUTURE:

FINLAND BIGGER
THAN ITS SIZE GLOBALLY
Together we are always more and cooperation will always
take us further. SDP’s goal is to promote a rapid and
comprehensive shift to ecologically, socially and economi-
cally sustainable development both in Finland and globally.
This work is guided by the UN Sustainable Development
Agenda 2030. However, we cannot reach the goals alone:
commitment to a rule-based system, international
cooperation, and jointly drafted agreements pave the way
to a sustainable and better future. Transnational challenges
can only be solved with transnational cooperation.

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This is how social democrats will promote international cooperation in the coming parliamentary term:

Reform the EU toward a people’s Europe. The Union’s social

dimension must be raised as equal alongside the economic dimen-
sion. In the coming decade, the Union must set ambitious targets
to promote employment, decrease poverty and invest in compe-
tence.
Work resolutely for the EU to strengthen its position as a leader
in global climate policy. Finland’s emission targets are tightened as
part of revising the European targets.
Ensure the stability of Finland’s foreign and security policy. The
policy is based on a credible defence, general conscription, high
national defence will, military non-alliance and international
defence cooperation, the European Union’s mutual assistance
obligation as well as the possibility to accept and provide
assistance.

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 FINLAND BIGGER THAN ITS SIZE GLOBALLY

In development cooperation, investments in strengthening the

social dimension, raising the level of education, developing the
labour market, and promoting equality must be increased.
*Particularly the rights of women and girls must be strengthened.
The level of development cooperation funding will be raised to
0.7 percent of the GNI by 2030.
Finland is active globally in eradicating tax evasion and tax haven
activities. Country-by-country tax reporting makes tax payment
more transparent. The basic structures of international corporate
taxation must be developed.

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 Humane, equal and fair Finland

WE HAVE 
A COMMON GOAL

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