Municipal Elections

Municipal elections are held to elect the councillors of the municipalities. At the beginning of 2017 there were altogether 295 municipalities in continental Finland and 16 in the Province of Åland.

Municipal elections are held every fourth year on the third Sunday of April. If the third Sunday in April is Easter Sunday, the Election Day is the Sunday preceding the Easter weekend. The next will be held on 9 April 2017.

The number of councillors elected depends on the population of a municipality. According to Section 16 of the Local Government Act (410/2015) the number of councillors varies as follows:



Population -> Councillors

at most 5000 - > 13

5001 - 20 000 - > 27

20 001 - 50 000 - > 43

50 001 - 100 000 - > 51

100 001 - 250 000 - > 59

250 001 - 500 000 - > 67

yli 500 000 - > 79

In Åland municipal elections are also held every fourth year, but not at the same time as in the rest of Finland; the next will be held in 2019.</s>Image: Vesa Moilanen / Lehtikuva

Finland's official Election Day for the 2017 municipal elections, April 9, sees polling stations open from 9 am to 8 pm. Over 33,000 candidates have registered as candidates for just shy of 9,000 local government position in 295 municipalities.

Both municipal and deputy councillors will be elected for a four-year term beginning on 1 June 2017.

Over 26 percent of eligible voters – or 1.1 million people – have already cast their vote in advance voting, which took place in Finland from 29 March to 1 April.

Election researcher Sami Borg from the University of Tampere predicts that the voting percentage may climb past 60 percent this year, up from the 2012 election turnout of 58.3 percent.

Voters are asked to present a picture ID when they arrive to the polling station. It is recommended that prospective voters also take their notice of their right to vote sent to their home by the Population Register Centre with them, although it is not required by law. The notice contains information about which of the approximately 2,200 election locations the voter is entitled to use on Election Day.

The number of the candidate should be written clearly on the ballot, taking care to distinguish ones from sevens, for example. Voters should avoid drawing or writing anything else on the ballot, as any other markings will disqualify the vote.

Preliminary information on the counting of votes will be available from 8 pm. As the advanced voting percentage is relatively high, these initial results provide a good indication of how the final results will look. The central municipal election boards won't confirm the final results in each municipality until Wednesday, April 12.

Residents of the autonomous region of the Åland Islands vote at a different time than the rest of Finland. They will go to the polls next in October 2019.</s>HELSINKI (AP) - The co-ruling conservative National Coalition Party has won Finland's municipal elections for the third straight time since 2008, while its coalition partner The Finns emerged as the biggest loser and the opposition The Greens made big gains nationwide.

Finland's Finance Minister Petteri Orpo declared victory late Sunday for his NCP party, which had received 20.6 percent of the votes with 98 percent counted early Monday, nearly on par with the previous elections.

The opposition Social Democrats took second place and Prime Minister Juha Sipila's ruling Center Party third place with 19.4 and 17.8 percent support respectively.

The eurosceptic The Finns led by Foreign Minister Timo Soini settled for 8.8 percent of the votes. The Greens received 12.4 percent compared to 8.5 percent previously.</s>HELSINKI: Finland's co-ruling, eurosceptic Finns party is poised for a loss in Sunday's municipal elections, with the latest opinion polls showing the party far behind its centre-right coalition partners.

The local election is not expected to change the course of Prime Minister Juha Sipila's three-party government, but a loss for the Finns could complicate the coalition's efforts and tip the party's own leadership race in favour of a hardline candidates.

A final poll by broadcaster YLE on Thursday showed Sipila's Centre Party, the co-ruling conservative NCP and opposition party Social Democrats all with the support of around 18 percent of voters. The Finns, the second-biggest party in parliament, ranked fifth with 9.7 percent of support.

The survey was in line with earlier polls showing Finns falling short of the 17.7 percent it got in a parliamentary vote two years ago and below its 12.3 percent in 2012 local elections.

"The Finns have often said they are not as strong in municipal elections as on national level. But if their support falls below 10 percent, they need to find a better explanation", said Kimmo Gronlund, professor of political science at Abo Akademi.

Formerly known as True Finns, the party has in recent years softened its nationalist and anti-EU platform and distanced itself from other European far-right parties, which helped it enter the coalition government two years ago.

But compromises in the government - which policies have included public spending cuts, backing the EU bailout for Greece and providing help for migrants - have angered some of its core voters.

The party's leader, Foreign Minister Timo Soini, is stepping down as party chair in June, and a loss in the local vote could improve Jussi Halla-aho's chances to replace him.

Halla-aho, a member of the European Parliament and an anti-immigration hardliner, is one of two front-runners in the leadership race with lawmaker Sampo Terho, a Soini ally.

A victory for Halla-aho, who would seek Finland's exit from both the euro zone and the European Union if elected, could bring down the country's three-party government, analysts said.

"Loss at the polls would strengthen the anti-immigrant factions' arguments, that government policies are to blame for the party's problems", said Markku Jokisipila, a political scientist at the University of Turku.

Early voting results will be announced after polling stations close at 1700 GMT. A majority of votes is expected to be counted within three hours.</s>Finland's economy has yet to return to its 2008 output levels because of a string of setbacks, including the decline of Nokia's ( ) former phone business and recession in neighboring Russia.

Markets were expecting Moody's to downgrade Finland's rating to AA+.

Standard & Poor's cut Finland to AA+ already in 2014, and it now has a negative outlook for that rating. Fitch still rates the economy AAA, with a negative outlook.

Long proud of its top grade ratings, Finland took a hard line against euro zone bailouts during the currency bloc's debt crisis.

This year, the EU Commission expects Finland to be the weakest economic performer in the European Union, excluding Greece.

Prime Minister Juha Sipila's center-right government aims to rein in public debt growth by pushing for reforms and 10 billion euros ($10.8 billion) of spending cuts by 2030, but its reform program is strongly opposed by trade unions.</s>The 833-mile (1,340 km) border marks an external limit of the EU's free-travel Schengen area, but Orpo said issues would be handled bilaterally between Finland and its giant neighbour. He did not specify what measures might be taken.

"Although Finland's eastern border is also the outer border of the Schengen area, both Finland and Russia want to solve the issue primarily on bilateral basis," Orpo said in a statement after meeting his Russian counterpart Vladimir Kolokoltsev.

Finland, a militarily neutral EU state, has long walked a fine line with Russia, its former ruler and important trade partner.

Last week, the government criticised Moscow for allowing increasing numbers of asylum seekers across their Arctic border. It also stressed that a common European solution must be found to the refugee crisis.

The Schengen zone comprises 26 states, most of which are also EU members, several of which have introduced temporary border checks as they struggle to control the flow of people arriving in the EU from the Middle East and elsewhere.

According to the Finnish border guard, about 400 asylum seekers have come from Russia to Finland this month, compared with about 700 in the whole of 2015.

Finnish Prime Minister Juha Sipila and Russian premier Dmitry Medvedev are due to discuss the migrant issue on Friday.</s>* But gas is still too expensive to compete - Gasum

HELSINKI, Nov 13 Finland came clean on Wednesday on its gas deal with Russia that would be the envy of much the rest of Europe, but said, thanks to sinking domestic demand, it was not as good as it had been as lower usage pressured prices.

Supplies from Russian Gazprom in a long standing deal are 50 percent indexed to oil prices, giving it lower import prices than in Western Europe where buyers are crying out for a less than near-total link to oil, said the head of the Finnish gas utility Gasum, itself part owned by Gazprom.

"Our contract is good, but the gas price level is not competitive in this market," Antero Jannes, Gasum's CEO, told the Baltic Energy Summit.

Gasum operates Finland's natural gas network and buys all its natural gas from Russia under a contract which was signed in 2005 and expires in 2026.

Apart from the oil link, the rest of the indexed link is against coal prices and a basket of domestic power and heat prices, so-called domestic energy index, Jannes told Reuters.

"While in Western Europe it's difficult to replace gas used by households, in Finland gas is mostly used for power and heat generation, and in the paper industry," he added, explaining why Finland got such a lucrative contract.

Cheap coal because of global oversupply, along with low power prices as a result of stagnant demand, mean that Gasum's contract is now relatively cheap, and that Finland is now buying Russian gas at a discount of about 7 euros per megawatt-hour (MWh) compared to customers in Western Europe, according to Gasum.

Also, nearly one-quarter of Finland's total energy consumption was covered with wood fuels in 2012, which is almost as large as consumption of oil.

Analysts at Thomson Reuters Point Carbon estimate that customers in Western Europe have achieved spot-indexation share to increase to 7-15 percent during the recent negotiations with Gazprom.

Gasum data showed that Finland was paying less than 30 euros a MWh during the first half of this year, comparable to gas prices in Britain's competitive spot market.

Still, gas consumption in Finland fell by 10.5 percent to 34.96 terawatt-hours (TWh) or about 3.2 billion cubic metres (bcm) in 2012 from 39.07 TWh in 2011.

Two-thirds of gas consumed in Finland is used for combined heat and power generation.

"If the gas doesn't become competitive against coal, the consumption will continue to slide down," Jannes said.

Earlier on Wednesday, Baltic government officials warned that plans around the region to expand the use of natural gas to replace dirtier fuels will stall if no new supplies are found to help to bring down prices.

Gasum is owned by state controlled utility Fortum with 31 percent, Russia's Gazprom with 25 percent, the Finnish state, which has 24 percent, and Germany's E.ON. 20 percent.

E.ON has said it wanted to sell its take at Gasum, and the Finnish government was in talks over a possible acquisition.

"E.ON is in the process to sell the shares, and we probably see the outcome next year," Jannes told the conference. (Reporting by Nerijus Adomaitis, editing by William Hardy)</s>Arto Lampila won a seat on the Jyväskylä City Council with a tally of 147 votes and Petrus Pennanen a seat on the Helsinki City Council with a tally of 1,048 votes. Both Lampila and Pennanen are deputy chairpersons of the Pirate Party of Finland.

“They did not do it alone, but we are thankful for the breakthrough to our numerous supporters and active members across the country,” Malinen writes in a blog on Puheenvuoro.

Malinen also expresses her delight with both the political breakthrough of another fledgling party, the Feminist Party, and the losses suffered by each of the four largest parties in Finland – the Centre Party, the National Coalition, the Finns Party and the Social Democrats.

“I am particularly pleased to see support for all of the four largest parties decline and 44 per cent of council seats being re-distributed,” she said.

The Feminist Party’s Katju Aro won a seat on the Helsinki City Council with a vote tally of 1,542.

Malinen estimates that the winners of the elections, the Green League and the Left Alliance, are both youthful parties capable of constructive co-operation with the Pirate Party of Finland. “The election results on the whole seem to signal a power shift, perhaps not an immediate one but one in a positive direction,” she says.</s>“The party is rising to a new level,” Ville Niinistö, the chairperson of the Green League, analysed the implications of the election results in an interview with Helsingin Sanomat.

The Green League won 24.1 per cent of the ballot in Helsinki, falling 4.3 percentage points short of the vote share of the National Coalition Party. The National Coalition owed much of its success in the capital to the popularity of its mayoral candidate, Jan Vapaavuori, who won the most votes in the entire country – a total of 29,547.

“We have to give a big hand to [Vapaavuori]. Congratulations. Absolutely amazing,” Petteri Orpo, the chairperson of the National Coalition, said to YLE.

The National Coalition also held on to its status as the largest party in municipal politics in the entire country by receiving 20.7 per cent of the votes, a share that signals a drop of 1.2 percentage points from the previous municipal elections.

SDP loses ground in large cities

The Social Democratic Party, meanwhile, failed to live up to the pre-election hype generated by opinion polls and saw its national vote share diminish by 0.2 percentage points from the previous municipal elections to 19.4 per cent.

Antti Rinne, the chairperson of the Social Democrats, had stated before the elections that the opposition party should be satisfied only if it emerges as the largest party in the elections.

The Social Democratic Party lost ground especially in large cities, with its vote share dropping in each of the seven most populous cities in Finland.

The election results were a disappointment also for the Finns Party, which saw its national vote share plummet from 12.3 per cent in 2012 to 8.8 per cent in 2017.

There is no room for excuses, admitted Timo Soini, the chairperson of the Finns Party. “We got a beating. There’s no denying that we lost these elections,” he stated in an interview with Helsingin Sanomat on Sunday.

Centre wins most seats

The Centre Party similarly fell short of its own expectations, with its national vote share dwindling from 18.7 to 17.5 per cent.

“I must admit that it’d be a slight disappointment if we fell short of the 18 per cent mark,” Juha Sipilä, the chairperson of the Centre Party, commented while the votes were still being counted on Sunday.

He later estimated that the disappointing results are attributable to the difficult decisions and reforms that have fallen on the shoulders of his Government. “It’s obvious that once you once you start taking action, it’s easy to criticise,” he explained to YLE.

The Centre Party remained the most popular party in numerous small municipalities and, as a result, secured by far the highest number of council seats in the country, a total of 2,823 – roughly 1,100 more than the Social Democrats.

The Left Alliance and the Swedish People’s Party were both able to bump up their national vote share from the previous municipal elections, the former by 0.8 percentage points to 8.8 per cent and the latter by 0.2 percentage points to 4.9 per cent.The Christian Democrats also saw its vote share increase, by 0.4 percentage points to 4.1 per cent.

Voter turnout improved by 0.5 percentage points from the previous municipal elections to 58.8 per cent, according to Helsingin Sanomat.</s>Nordic telecom operator Teliasonera has bought 4G licenses in Finland for 41.2 million euros ($567 million) to boost coverage in the country, the company said on Wednesday.

"The new frequencies will enable a significant increase in 4G coverage and constitute an important step in creating Finland's most extensive mobile broadband network," Teliasonera said in a statement.

The license auction was held by Finland's Ministry of Transport and Communications. ($1 = 0.7262 euros)
Voters go to the polls for municipal elections in Finland.