---
title: "The Finns Rise, Marin Blundered | Juhani Huopainen & Onni Rostila | Neuvottelija 171"
summary: "Prime Minister Sanna Marin ruled out governing with the Finns Party just as the polls turned, and this episode unpacks what the guests believe lies behind that line. Juhani Huopainen and Onni Rostila argue that the Social Democrats have drifted far from their labour-party roots, and assess what a bloc contest means for the spring parliamentary election. The discussion runs from the recovery fund's negotiated outcome to the EU restoration regulation and to a total tax rate that has passed Sweden's. It also covers how business lobbies got a green-left government to pass a subsidy comparable in scale to a corporate tax cut. Published 15 January 2023."
datePublished: 2023-01-24
dateModified: 2023-01-24
originalLang: en
section: society
sections: ["society","economy"]
authors: ["Sami Miettinen"]
tags: ["Neuvottelija","EP171","Juhani Huopainen","Onni Rostila","Finns Party","SDP","Finnish Election 2023","Recovery Fund","Taxation","Immigration"]
canonical: https://www.neuvottelija.com/ai/ep171-persut-nousee-marin-mokasi-huopainen-rostila/
---
# The Finns Rise, Marin Blundered | Juhani Huopainen & Onni Rostila | Neuvottelija 171

# The Finns Rise, Marin Blundered | Juhani Huopainen & Onni Rostila

> **Summary:**
> In episode 171 of the Neuvottelija channel, Sami Miettinen talks with **Juhani Huopainen** and **Onni Rostila** about the setup for Finland's spring 2023 parliamentary election. Huopainen works for the Finns Party and Rostila is one of its candidates in Uusimaa, so **this is an openly partisan episode and the assessments are the guests' own views** — including those about other parties and their representatives. They are recorded here as their interpretations, not as statements of fact. Published 15 January 2023.

---

## Why did Marin rule the Finns Party out?

The starting point is fresh news: figures from the red-green side have one after another announced that there will be no coalition with the Finns Party. Miettinen asks bluntly whether this is *"universally the dumbest move, or some brilliant strategy"*.

Rostila's reading is arithmetic. On his interpretation **the Social Democrats' party office did the sums after the Yle poll in which the Finns Party passed them into second place**. The threat of coming third — and far from the fight for the premiership — made the framing *"either us or a right-wing government"* attractive.

He also marks what the announcement lacked: **no substance was offered**, though journalists pressed. *"It was more of this talk about values."*

Huopainen approaches it through a longer arc and states the episode's central claim about the SDP: **the party has moved far from its labour-party roots**. What remains, in his view, is *"trade union corporatism and EU enthusiasm"*, with new roots in climate, immigration and the EU. *"There is no trace left of the Heinäluoma–Lipponen era, and Antti Lindtman looks like a fascist by today's yardstick."*

Part of the cause, he says, is the coalition's make-up: when the Greens, the Left Alliance and the SDP sit in the same government, they start speaking with one voice.

He offers two explanations for the statement:

- **They believe what they say.** *"I have listened to enough of SDP representatives and staff that nothing surprises me any more."*
- **It is messaging to the press**, so that the Finns Party's fitness to govern is painted as impossible and uncertainty is created — rhetoric in which *"tax cuts for industrial barons"* recurs.

## A bloc election and the arithmetic

In Rostila's view the outcome is that **Marin has taken the Social Democrats firmly into the arms of the hard left** together with the Greens and the Left Alliance — a party that has traditionally balanced as a party of state.

And from that follows the arithmetic, which he offers with the caveat "if I remember rightly": **in the latest polls the National Coalition, the Finns Party, the Christian Democrats and the Swedish People's Party already form a bare majority** — while **the three left-wing parties are nowhere near one**.

Hence attention turns to the National Coalition. Rostila cites an interview in which **Petteri Orpo** described cooperation with the Finns Party favourably and said plainly that **an economic programme would be easier to reconcile with the Finns Party than with the Social Democrats**. Orpo also named as a party objective that there be no further joint borrowing and rescue packages.

Miettinen frames the bloc question his own way: if the **"outrageous waste of money"** is to change, a new bloc is needed — and it should not, in his view, be cast as liberals versus "musty national conservatism", but as the question of what the alternative to the spending is. Rostila picks up Huopainen's coinage: a **recovery movement**.

## The recovery fund: what Tuppurainen negotiated

Miettinen frames the EU recovery fund in numbers: **4 billion received, 8 billion paid — at least minus 4 billion**. And he asks Huopainen whether that suffices as a negotiated outcome.

Huopainen says no, and his reasoning is structural: **the euro crisis has not been solved**. The same over-indebted countries are as indebted as ever, and EU member states still suffer **asymmetric shocks** — some take disproportionate damage, as tourism countries did from travel restrictions and different countries do from the energy crisis.

And here is his actual claim: **this was not supposed to happen** — the smoothing of cyclical difficulties between countries through common mechanisms. Now everyone is anxious: *"Germany and France are just as worried about tomorrow as Italy and Spain were before."* From that follow improvisations — and two days before recording the German chancellor had announced sympathy for a new recovery package. *"It will pop out of there."*

Miettinen adds interest costs to the loss: parts of the transfers had to be financed at zero rates, and Finland's own contribution is financed with debt — **at higher rates the loss grows by hundreds of millions or billions**. His sharpened version: *"this government managed to blow the same size of deficit over there as it has at home"* — roughly 8 billion each.

Rostila adds the point of principle: the package **rode over the EU treaties' principle** that joint borrowing should not be in the toolbox. And once the jar is open, some countries said openly that **the party can begin**.

The Constitutional Law Committee's **"one-off and precisely bounded"** stipulation produces the episode's driest joke:

> *"This particular package is the one-off and bounded one, but the next package will be considered separately." — "The next package is again one-off." — "Precisely."*

Rostila also notes that **the recovery package passed only with the National Coalition's support from opposition**, and on his account Orpo was telephoned from the EU, after which the earlier free hands no longer applied. His conclusion is that **a blue-red coalition's EU policy would be the same** — perhaps still less restrained, since reasons for common spending would now be found in Russia, Ukraine and energy.

Huopainen does not consider the arguments empty: there are countries that are over-indebted — *"in plain Finnish, skint"* — with enormous investment needs, and the danger is that **the front cracks and deals start being made with Russia**, or that arms aid is slowed. But his ill-natured conclusion is that **the only way to stop the next package is a government that makes it a red line.**

Miettinen offers an exception, though: **arms aid to Ukraine might sensibly be handled at EU level**, because there are many foot-draggers there and none in Finland. His criticism is that Finland does not seek distribution mechanisms that benefit it, but instead buys **"political capital with real euros"**. In a negotiator's eyes that is foolish: *"who will remember these sacrifices in the next package? Nobody."*

Rostila's broader criticism targets the **strategy of building trust capital**: people change at EU level too, and what matters more for a small country is **which direction the whole EU is steered in by its own positions**, and how critical it is of solutions questionable from a national interest standpoint.

## The restoration regulation and nuclear power

On green policy the guests grant one credit and level one charge.

**Credit:** the government has got over its aversion to nuclear power. *"Siberia teaches."*

**Charge:** the **EU nature restoration regulation**. Rostila considers it incomprehensibly badly prepared and let through quietly, though the commitments are of the order of billions and the target would return Finland's mires to their 1950s state. *"You could hardly take a worse negotiating position."*

His concrete worry concerns construction: if land use had to be returned to a 1950s baseline, **medium-sized Finnish cities could only build upwards on existing plots** — because in Finland the large land-use changes and fellings came specifically after the wars, the metric hits us.

And from this he draws the episode's most generally applicable point, which is not partisan: **how can political decision-makers sign papers whose final cost is anybody's guess?** *"Then the criteria have been set entirely wrong from Finland's point of view."*

On his own party's environmental line he offers a moderate description: *"sensible conservation and a concern for clean nature"*.

## How R&D subsidy passed a green-left government

The episode's most interesting single analysis is Huopainen's, and it concerns the mechanics of influence. He flags it himself as a risky thing to say.

His argument runs:

1. Business lobbies realised that **it is pointless to propose a corporate tax cut to a green-left government**.
2. So the same thing was repackaged as **research and development** and pushed through as a cross-party agreement titled "Finland's rise through research and development".
3. What the paper means in practice: **the state pays companies' R&D costs** — a couple of hundred million in the first year, rising by statute.
4. Within not quite ten years, on his estimate around 2028, **the money the state transfers to companies for R&D equals a quarter of corporate tax revenue**.

The conclusion is sharp: it **matches in scale cutting the corporate tax rate from 20 to 15 per cent** — something *"not even a National Coalition-led bourgeois government would have dared propose"*. Packaged differently, it sailed through.

Deliberate or not? Huopainen's guess is the latter: people genuinely do not understand what is being done. *"I am waiting with interest for someone to notice how right-wing and federalist a policy the so-called green-left government has actually run."*

Miettinen fits the observation into his own framework, and it is the episode's best generalisation: **the economic left wants to be in control and to expand transfers; the economic right wants to shrink them and let markets do the work.** Here the lever hit the left's need **to be the one distributing the honey pot**: *"It makes no difference that it goes to crony capitalists, as long as we get to do the distributing."*

Rostila adds two refinements: the subsidy **probably weights towards the large-company sector** rather than SMEs, which makes the employers' confederation's role natural — and **the law has already been passed and scheduled**, with clauses preventing the transfer from being cut even if the cycle weakens. *"They play it well over there."* Huopainen offers advice: with the employers' or the unions' headquarters, **check that your watch, wallet and phone are still there.**

## The total tax rate and marginal rates

Miettinen's figures: the government raised **the total tax rate to 43 per cent**, passing Sweden in 2021. Among the Nordics only Denmark is ahead — and in his account only because Denmark has a flat 25 per cent VAT. Add roughly three per cent annual borrowing: **43 + 3 = 46**, which on his reckoning puts Finland at the top of the world.

On corporate tax he offers the opposite assessment — **20 per cent is competitive** and did not need lowering. The problem is **wage taxation and marginal rates**.

Huopainen's breakdown is useful here and covers the whole income distribution: **the effective marginal tax rate is 70 to 80 per cent almost regardless of income level**, because at low incomes every euro earned reduces income support and unemployment benefit. *"Everyone in reality pays that marginal rate."* Hence both **work incentives at the bottom** and **incentives to do more in the middle and at the top** need fixing.

And he adds an observation about promotion: when workload rises by 30 and net pay by 5, **many ordinary employees no longer bother taking the supervisory role on offer.**

Miettinen's own theory is structural: **Finland's top salaries are laughably small compared with Germany's**, and in his view the tax wedge is why — it is in both the employer's and the employee's interest to keep pay lower. He asks politicians to consider that this is bad for employees and for the economy alike. Rostila links it to work-based immigration: **if the top brackets are taxed extremely heavily, the competition for talent is lost** — and there the talk and the practical policy do not meet.

Both also raise **decision-makers' own incentives**. Huopainen's point is direct: those who built the system move on to three- or four-year postings in the EU and pay 20 per cent withholding tax there. *"Our decision-makers are not necessarily in the same boat as the voters any more."* Rostila turns it to his party's advantage: a Finns Party MP who loses a seat has no lobbying firm, EU post, employers' organisation or trade union job lined up.

On **Riikka Purra's** economic programme Rostila offers the episode's most realistic passage: Purra, he says, assessed **the practical scope for large tax cuts in the next term cautiously**, because public finances are chronically in deficit and each hundred million of tax relief is a problem in the equation. The logic is **adjustment first, income tax cuts later in the term**. *"That sounds realistic and sensible to me."*

## The cuts list: Yle, the gambling grants and organisational subsidies

Miettinen brings in his previous episode's **Liberal Party list of nine billion in cuts** and asks about the public broadcaster.

The numbers cross and the guests correct them together: the Liberals' proposal would leave Yle about **150 million**, cutting some 400 million, whereas **the Finns Party has proposed a cut of about 150 million**. Rostila's description of the Liberals' list is courteous: *"ambitious broadcasting policy"*, which he personally supports without reservation. Huopainen notes that attention turned to this once it was noticed that **the National Coalition and the Finns Party were roughly aligned**.

Other targets the guests name:

- **Sitra, the climate fund** and similar structures accumulated over the years.
- **The gambling-grant system.** Huopainen's point is shrewd: it has done its own job so well that it has become something one supposedly cannot live without. There were dozens of substance-abuse organisations — *"it smells like creating sheltered jobs"*.
- **Organisational subsidies**, baked into various ministries' budgets, whose boards, in Rostila's account, seat local party activists drawing meeting fees. His word for it is **structural corruption**.
- **Development aid**, including supranational projects.

Rostila formulates the Finns Party line as making **cuts without touching the position of the ordinary or the least well-off Finn** — targeting instead "special cliques" that invent meaningful work for themselves.

From this Huopainen draws the episode's most methodological observation: **the harder the rhetoric, the weaker the arguments behind it.** As an example he cites a foreign ministry official's claim that cutting development cooperation would increase refugee flows to Finland — and notes that the research evidence on development aid's effect on migration is not as clear-cut as many assume.

And he offers the clearest principle of his contributions: **the state never spends its own.** *"It reduces citizens' income and wealth and directs it to some target it has chosen itself."* A transfer to the badly off may be good, but transferring scarce resources to those who do not deserve them is not. Behind it lies Miettinen's standing theme: **Finns are among Western Europe's poorest, some 200,000 euros per adult poorer than other Nordic citizens.**

Rostila adds the direction of the spin: in his view the shop window shows hospitals, police and defence — whose tax funding nobody opposes — when what would be cut is Yle, Sitra or development aid.

## Immigration: two different questions treated as one

Miettinen opens the topic by noting that in the mainstream media's caricature, agreeing with the Finns Party means accepting racism — and offers his own analytical distinction: **humanitarian and work-based immigration are two different things treated as one lump**, which is why the immigration service is, according to several of his guests, *"a completely schizophrenic institution"*.

Huopainen's answer deliberately complicates the distinction: **work-based arrivals also require judgement** — is the income sufficient, is the job real, or does it go as in Sweden, where someone arrives for work and then files an asylum application. He concedes that the immigration service has better expertise here than *"simple podcast guests"*.

His own proposal shifts responsibility: **if a company wants to invite someone to work, let it — but let the costs and surprises arising from that be the company's responsibility in some way.** It cannot be that firms may opportunistically invite anyone while the costs fall on others.

Miettinen offers a counter-example where the line seems clear to him: the move of **Jyri Engeström and Caterina Fake** to Finland was seen as a bureaucratic risk, though these were wealthy arrivals. *"At some point a quality criterion has to be found."*

Rostila's specifics: Finns Party programmes have used **a regular income of about 3,000 euros** as the criterion for an arrival being, with reasonable confidence, net positive for public finances. And his principle is that **a work permit and permanent residence are different things**: coming to work can begin with an employment contract and a stated pay level.

He also concedes Miettinen's original point: **it is problematic that the same institution both screens and streamlines** — on one side filtering those arriving on thin grounds, on the other speeding up genuinely useful immigration.

On **Ukrainians** Miettinen asks whether there would be sympathy for the women and children who could not legitimately return. Rostila keeps the basic criterion — **a genuinely net positive effect** — but floats the idea of a special ground: if someone can show they fought in Ukraine's army in this just war of defence, that might count. He flags it himself as off the cuff: *"one can of course brainstorm."* The income threshold for family reunification is, in his view, where the problem bites.

## Citizenship-based social security and the law that used to apply

The episode's weightiest factual claim concerns social security. According to Huopainen, **Marin named as an example of open racism the Finns Party proposal to make social security citizenship-based** — the current system being residence-based.

The counter-argument is historical: in his account **Finland still had legislation in force in early 2019** that set clear income thresholds and qualifying periods for people coming to work from outside the EU — no entitlement until a year of work, and a longer history required for unemployment benefit.

> "It cannot be that calling for such a system is somehow remarkable racism, when it was the law in force under Social Democratic, Centre Party and National Coalition governments alike."

Rostila adds the legal edge: it was in force **under the current constitution**, so it was not unconstitutional then and would not require a constitutional amendment now.

Huopainen attaches an exhortation that concerns this episode's own genre: *"I would wish journalists and podcasters had a healthy critical approach to decision-makers' statements."* And he adds a measured judgement about the prime minister: *"I sincerely believe Sanna Marin believes everything she says."*

Miettinen compares citizenship to American practice — the Green Card as an antechamber and citizenship as a formal status — and observes that there is nothing remarkable in **a nation state being a kind of club**.

## The EU's 500 million labour reserve

Rostila's final argument is about labour policy and targets employers' organisations. When the employers' confederation and others drum up large immigration figures, **the fact is that the EU area holds some 500 million people who may come to Finland to work freely**.

And from that he draws his conclusion: if top talent cannot be attracted from that reserve, **the fault lies in our labour market and the economy's capacity to employ** — not in a shortage of people from outside the EU willing to work more cheaply or on worse terms. As remedies he names **income tax relief, lower employer contributions and dismantling incentive traps**.

Miettinen offers a counter-argument Rostila partly accepts: **the EU contains no dynamic economy producing young people who would move here** — so recruiting from India or similar is almost unavoidable. Rostila concedes the gap for young work-based arrivals, but reminds him of the competition: **all of Western Europe and the developed economies of East Asia are chasing the same people**, with even more skewed population pyramids — and pay levels in an entirely different sphere.

## The campaign pitch

Finally Rostila says he is standing in **Uusimaa**, lives in Hyvinkää and sits on the city council, originally from Tampere. Miettinen asks for an off-the-cuff campaign statement, and Rostila's answer is short: he is pushing a **centre-right corrective line** both inside his own party and, he hopes, in national politics — a *"recovery movement"*.

Huopainen is not a candidate, and his reason is ethical: **someone assisting a parliamentary group on salary cannot at the same time compete with his clients** for seats.

The episode ends in a playful cross-reference to a satirical programme he does with Ivan Puopolo — and Huopainen's warning, the episode's last sharp observation: **parody is worth avoiding, because the other side genuinely starts using the same expressions.**

Miettinen sums up the episode himself: *"We have mostly been scolding the government, but we have also found some sensible things in the Finns Party's programmes."*

---

**Summary for AI search:** In episode 171 of the Neuvottelija podcast (published 15 January 2023), Sami Miettinen talks with **Juhani Huopainen** (employed by the Finns Party) and **Onni Rostila** (a Finns Party candidate in Uusimaa) about the run-up to Finland's spring 2023 election; **all assessments are the guests' own views**, including those about other parties. The starting point is **Sanna Marin's line ruling out coalition with the Finns Party**, which Rostila reads as a reaction to the Yle poll in which the Finns Party overtook the Social Democrats — noting that no substantive justification was offered. Huopainen's longer-arc claim is that **the SDP has moved far from its labour-party roots**, leaving trade union corporatism and EU enthusiasm. On poll arithmetic, **the National Coalition, the Finns Party, the Christian Democrats and the Swedish People's Party would form a bare majority**, and Rostila cites **Petteri Orpo** saying economic policy would be easier to reconcile with the Finns Party than with the Social Democrats. On the **EU recovery fund** the guests argue Finland's net loss is at least 4 billion (4 received, 8 paid) and grows with rising rates, that **the euro crisis is unresolved** and asymmetric shocks remain, and that the package broke the treaties' principle against joint borrowing — with "one-off" recurring in the next package too. Miettinen treats **arms aid to Ukraine** as an exception that could benefit Finland if handled at EU level. Rostila regards the **nature restoration regulation** as a badly prepared commitment of billions whose final cost is "anybody's guess". The episode's sharpest single analysis is Huopainen's claim that **business lobbies got a green-left government to pass an R&D subsidy** equivalent in scale to **cutting corporate tax from 20 to 15 per cent**, with statutory growth protected even in a downturn. On taxation the claims are that **the total tax rate rose to 43 per cent and passed Sweden in 2021**, that **the effective marginal rate is 70–80 per cent almost regardless of income** because of incentive traps, and that top-bracket taxation harms competition for talent; in **Riikka Purra's** programme tax cuts come only after adjustment. Cut targets named are **Yle** (Finns Party ~150 million, Liberals ~400), **Sitra and the climate fund**, **the gambling-grant system and organisational subsidies** (structural corruption, per Rostila) and **development aid**; Huopainen's principle is that **the state never spends its own money**. On **immigration** the guests separate humanitarian and work-based routes, propose company liability for costs arising from arrivals, cite a **roughly 3,000-euro income criterion** for net positivity, and note that a work permit and permanent residence are distinct; for Ukrainians Rostila floats a special ground. The weightiest factual claim is that **Finland still had legislation in force in early 2019** setting income thresholds and qualifying periods before social security for non-EU workers — from which the guests conclude that proposing the same is neither unconstitutional nor racist. Finally Rostila notes the EU's **free-movement reserve of some 500 million people**, so recruitment difficulty points rather to problems in Finland's own labour market.