This bold government plan has already faced difficulties.
The government proposes to cut unemployment benefits for immigrants by ten percent.
The bill presented in parliament means that immigrants who have lived in Finland for less than three years will receive unemployment benefits approximately 77 euros per month less than other unemployed individuals.
Initially, immigrants will receive a reduced benefit of 33.64 euros per day, which averages around 723 euros per month instead of the usual 800 euros.
Full benefits can be obtained before the three-year period is up: either by meeting the work experience requirement or by proving sufficient proficiency in Finnish or Swedish through an exam. The government justifies the new bill as a means to encourage integration.
This government plan faced difficulties in the spring.
It turned out that the intended reduction of benefits for immigrants, aimed at saving money, would have the opposite effect – an increase in budget expenditures. The initial assessment by officials was fundamentally incorrect.
The reason for the increase in expenses is that under the new bill, immigrants gain the right to language training or employment assistance services for six months from the start of unemployment. Organizing these services incurs costs.
In the spring, authorities feared that expenses could amount to tens of millions of euros per year.
As a result, the new bill includes an assessment indicating that the overall reform will worsen the state of public finances by nearly 10 million euros per year.
The fate of the bill in parliament has not yet been decided. It will also be reviewed by the constitutional committee. For example, in 2016, Juha Sipilä's government proposed to reduce unemployment benefits for immigrants, but the constitutional committee saw this as a problem in terms of equality. Ultimately, the government withdrew its proposal.
However, the current chairman of the constitutional committee, Heikki Vestman (NCP), stated that the constitution does not prevent the reduction of benefits for immigrants.
It all depends on whether the reasons for reducing benefits are substantial enough.
- Sipilä's government justified the lower benefits for immigrants primarily by stating that it reduces Finland's attractiveness as a country for relocation. The committee did not find this justification sufficient to place people in an unequal position, Vestman said last fall.
The publicly stated goal of the current government is to 'strengthen personal responsibility and initiative among those who have moved to Finland in effectively learning the language and entering the labor market.'
Leave a comment