HELSINKI (Reuters) – Finland’s incoming coalition government said on Friday it had agreed to cut refugee quotas, raise the bar for work-based immigration and make it more difficult for foreigners to obtain citizenship, key priorities for the nationalist Finns Party.
“In recent years Finland has been the only Nordic country with a more lenient immigration policy. This changes now,” Finns Party leader Rikka Purra told a news conference, calling the new policy a paradigm change.
The government will also reject the use of any further joint European Union economic recovery plans like the one implemented during the COVID-19 pandemic, which the National Coalition and the eurosceptic Finns, Finland’s two biggest parties, opposed.
The government, which will be led by Petteri Orpo, head of the conservative National Coalition, also plans to improve public finances by cutting spending, reducing taxes and helping create an estimated 100,000 new jobs over the next four years.
By getting the NCP, the eurosceptic Finns, minority-language Swedish People’s Party and the Christian Democrats to agree on a common platform, Orpo shifts Finnish politics to the right and sends left-wing Prime Minister Sanna Marin into opposition.
The NCP won 48 seats in the April 2 election, ahead of the Finns with 46, while outgoing Prime Minister Marin’s Social Democrats came third with 43 elected members of the 200-seat parliament.
To secure a majority, Orpo included the Swedish People’s Party, which holds nine seats, and the Christian Democrats with five, bringing the total support to 108.
(Reporting by Essi Lehto, editing by Terje Solsvik)
