EP312 · Society · first published 2025-03-05

The Finnish Constitution | Heikki Vestman | Negotiator 312

This is a summary on Neuvottelija — Articles. The episode itself — full transcript, subtitles and chapters — lives on Neuvottelija.com, which is its canonical home.

Heikki Vestman, chair of the Constitutional Law Committee, explains why in Finland the interpretation of the constitution is decided by an elected committee rather than a court. The episode covers the committee's method — its sources of law, expert hearings and the pursuit of unanimity that produced 60 unanimous opinions out of 64 in 2024 — and why Finland is the only Nordic country with ex ante review that binds parliament. The border security act was passed as an exception act, a peculiarity of the Finnish constitutional order inherited from the years of oppression under Russian rule. Also the structure of economic and social fundamental rights, the constitutional ceiling on taxation, universal applicability of collective agreements against freedom of contract, the limits of EU law primacy, and Vestman's closing worry about the juridification of political debate and the inflation of human rights. The constitutional provisions the discussion rests on are appended in their original wording. Published 5 March 2025.

Sami Miettinen · Sections: AI and Society

The Finnish Constitution | Heikki Vestman

Summary: In episode 312 Sami Miettinen interviews Heikki Vestman, chair of the Constitutional Law Committee, about why in Finland the interpretation of the constitution is decided by an elected committee rather than a court. It is an unusually thorough account of how the committee actually works — and it ends with Vestman’s own worry that political debate is being juridified at an accelerating pace. Published 5 March 2025.

A note on reading this. The episode opens with Miettinen asking Vestman to speak as chair of the committee rather than as a member of the National Coalition Party, and Vestman expressly agrees — that is in fact the daily task. At the end Miettinen sums up his guest as having been present about 95 per cent as the chair of the Constitutional Law Committee and about 5 per cent as a political actor. That is an honest description, but the reader should keep in mind that the guest is a sitting MP and that his account of the committee is a participant’s account of his own institution.

On sources. This article is curated from the episode’s transcript, and the constitutional provisions the discussion rests on have been added in their original wording. The statutory text was retrieved from the source rather than from memory, and is marked separately so the reader can see what is the episode and what is the statute. The subtitle track is YouTube’s automatic captioning (de-rolled from 3,427 cues to 1,710), so quotations are kept short. The English renderings of the provisions below are unofficial translations; the Finnish text linked in each case is the authoritative one.

1. Democracy twice over

Miettinen’s opening question is direct: why is the interpretation of the constitution given to parliament’s own committee rather than to frizzy-haired people in wigs forming a constitutional court?

Vestman’s answer starts from popular sovereignty, and he points to section 2 of the constitution, which reads:

The powers of the State in Finland are vested in the people, who are represented by the Parliament convened in session. — Suomen perustuslaki 1 luku 2 §

Vestman’s reading is political-philosophical: all exercise of public power, and indeed the validity of the whole legal order, is ultimately traceable to the will of the people (01:31). Miettinen’s framing of the same point is apt — if the interpretation of the constitution is done by a parliamentary committee, this is a kind of double democracy.

The committee’s task is defined in the constitution itself:

Section 74 — Supervision of constitutionality. The Constitutional Law Committee shall issue statements on the constitutionality of legislative proposals and other matters brought for its consideration, as well as on their relation to international human rights treaties. — Suomen perustuslaki 6 luku 74 §

And here is what makes the system exceptional. Vestman stresses that the committee’s position binds parliament: the plenary cannot enact as an ordinary act a law the committee has found to conflict with the constitution and which has not been corrected in that respect. Ultimately the Speaker ensures that no report is placed on the agenda in which the committee’s required corrections have not been made (06:11).

History. The model descends, in Vestman’s account, from the era of Russian rule: it is based originally on the constitutionality assessment carried out by the Diet’s Law Committee, which acquired a normative basis already then (03:04). The Constitutional Law Committee as a standing committee is as old as parliament itself, and its present strong role settled only after the Second World War. Miettinen ventures a guess at the motive — so that no Bobrikovs would end up in the court — and Vestman links it to the Diet’s Law Committee having held firmly to the good constitutional laws of the Swedish era (03:50).

An essential addition: when the new constitution entered into force in 2000, the model was reassessed and deliberately retained. This is not merely a historical relic but a considered choice by the constitutional legislator (04:38).

Nordic comparison. According to Vestman, no other Nordic country has comparable ex ante review binding on parliament — Finland is the only Nordic country with such a model (04:38).

2. Who watches the watchmen

Miettinen puts the objection directly: a self-supervising body can become corrupted or politically captured, if not everyone can leave their party hat outside the committee room (06:58).

Vestman concedes the tension is real and names it precisely: the committee assesses thoroughly political legislative projects in a thoroughly political environment, and its members are politicians elected at elections (07:43). The answer, he says, lies in method. The committee relies on sources of law, and he lists them:

1. the wording of the constitution
2. the preparatory documents — what was said about the purpose of the provision
3. the committee’s own earlier practice
4. the case law of the European Court of Human Rights

In addition experts are heard — professors of constitutional law, the Parliamentary Ombudsman and others — and the committee has committee counsels, parliamentary civil servants, as legal advisers (08:29).

The pursuit of unanimity is, in Vestman’s account, part of the method rather than an accident: it secures the broadest possible democratic acceptability and counters politicisation by the day’s agenda.

Why a constitutional court would not solve the problem

This is the episode’s strongest argument, and it is structural rather than patriotic.

Miettinen says he used to favour a constitutional court but changed his mind after watching the politicisation of the US Supreme Court — the broad immunity granted to Trump as his example (09:16).

Vestman’s answer generalises the observation. Politicisation is not a Trump-era phenomenon but says something essential about constitutional law as such: the body that interprets the constitution exercises significant societal power and has to take positions on questions of value — whichever body it is (10:47). That is why in practically every country with a constitutional court, judicial appointments have become more or less politicised. He gives three examples (11:34):

Vestman’s conclusion has two parts. First, the strength of the Finnish model is democratic legitimacy: value-laden decisions are made by elected representatives. Second — and this is the sharper half — the model protects the courts from politicisation:

I do not want judicial appointments in Finland to become politicised and politicians to start meddling with them. A great strength of our rule of law is that the appointment process is very neutral. (13:04)

3. The exception act and the border security law

This is the episode’s most contested passage, and Vestman works through it systematically.

Miettinen’s starting point is political and he says so: the border had to be closed, because sending people was utterly unscrupulous hybrid warfare, and bringing in experts on international law to prevent that strikes him as insane (13:04–13:49).

Vestman’s first clarification concerns bindingness: Finland is bound by the human rights obligations it has itself undertaken. The more interesting question, he suggests, is whether one could leave them and in what enactment procedure — some have been brought into force by ordinary act (14:34).

The second clarification is the substantive one. The exception act is, in his account, a peculiarity of the Finnish constitutional order scarcely known in other European countries. The mechanism is this: in Finland an act that is substantively in conflict with the constitution can be enacted in the enactment procedure for constitutional law, without amending the constitution itself (15:19).

The provision reads:

Section 73 — Enactment procedure for constitutional law. A proposal on the enactment, amendment or repeal of the Constitution, or on a limited derogation from the Constitution, shall […] be left in abeyance until the first parliamentary session following parliamentary elections. […] However, the proposal may be declared urgent by a decision supported by at least five sixths of the votes cast. In this event the proposal is not left in abeyance and it can be adopted by a decision supported by at least two thirds of the votes cast. — Suomen perustuslaki 6 luku 73 §

A clarification the episode leaves thin. Vestman speaks of a five-sixths urgency procedure, which is correct but incomplete: the provision is two-stage. Five sixths is required to declare the matter urgent, after which the act is adopted by two thirds. It is not a single 5/6 vote but two successive thresholds.

History. The exception act developed, in Vestman’s account, during the period of autonomy — it was Finland’s way of surviving the years of oppression without having to amend the constitutional laws — and the possibility was deliberately retained when the constitution was last reformed (16:05).

What an exception act does not mean. Vestman corrects a claim made in public debate: Finland has not wholesale withdrawn from human rights. Within the act’s limited scope of application the act overrides them when applied, but the binding effect remains. Human rights have not, in his account, dropped into Finland from outside; they are attached to the constitution, particularly through section 22 (17:37). The provision is short:

Section 22 — Protection of fundamental rights. The public authorities shall guarantee the observance of fundamental rights and human rights. — Suomen perustuslaki 2 luku 22 §

And the claim Vestman denies most directly. It was said publicly that every legal scholar heard by the committee had considered the act impossible to enact even as an exception act. That was not so: the committee relied particularly on the views of three experts, among them the Chancellor of Justice and the Parliamentary Ombudsman — bodies whose institutional duties under the constitution include supervising the realisation of fundamental and human rights (18:23).

From this he draws a more general observation that is central to the whole episode:

When the constitution is interpreted, there can be several possible interpretations, because the provisions are abstract, open, partly value-laden. The experts do not vote in the committee on what the interpretation of the constitution is — the committee makes that decision. (19:09)

4. Transparency, and that 60 out of 64

Miettinen asks about the committee’s secrecy. Vestman’s answer separates two things: the proceedings are not public, but the expert statements are — they become public once the committee has issued its opinion, including in the exception act case (20:40). He regards this as part of the method: one can verify what argumentation the committee’s position rested on.

One practical detail distinguishes the Constitutional Law Committee from others: there, experts always give a written statement, unlike in committees generally (21:25). The oral hearing can supplement it, but the original written document remains the official view.

The numbers. Miettinen refers to Vestman’s tweet: of the 64 opinions issued in 2024, 60 were unanimous. Vestman confirms it and adds what makes the figure interesting — among them are politically highly contested projects: labour market reforms, immigration acts and the government’s austerity acts, which provoked fierce public debate and which the opposition opposed. Even so the committee reached unanimity on the legal questions (22:56).

Vestman does not present unanimity as a requirement: sometimes votes are necessary, as they are for the Supreme Court and the Supreme Administrative Court. What matters is that both the majority’s and the minority’s position rests on sources of law and finds support in expert opinion (23:41).

Who is heard. Miettinen asks bluntly whether an expert who consistently produces poor statements can simply not be invited again. Vestman’s answer is a matter of principle: there is great value in hearing experts with differing views, and the committee does not seek to select experts congenial to it. The basis for who is heard comes from official preparation (25:57).

He does, however, name the real line of division among experts, and it is the most useful distinction in the article:

Experts differ in how they relate to the legislator’s margin of discretion. And that is the core question: how broad is the right of the simple democratic majority of the day to enact laws. (25:57)

Some emphasise a broader legislative discretion, others represent a stricter reading of fundamental rights.

5. Are social fundamental rights a trap

Miettinen’s question is politically loaded: did the 1995 fundamental rights reform create a trap in which rights are added endlessly and parliament is left to fund them through tax rises?

Vestman’s answer is structural, and it is the most instructive part of the episode. He points first to the timing: the reform was made in the depths of the recession, and it shows in the preparatory documents. They emphasise that in formulating the sections, particular attention was paid to the actual possibilities of realising the rights and to their applicability when economic conditions change (32:01).

Put crudely, the idea was written into them that you do what there is money for. (32:46)

This is, he says, the committee’s long-standing interpretation: the state of public finances is taken into account when calibrating benefits directly funded by the public authorities — and the limitation of resources is recognised in the world of human rights treaties too.

The second and more important observation concerns how the sections are drafted. Fundamental rights are not a monolith, Vestman says: the form dictates how far a simple majority may restrict them. Economic, social and cultural rights are almost all cast as obligations of the public authorities — they are not subjective individual rights (33:31).

This can be checked against the statute, and it holds. In section 19 the paragraphs are drafted differently:

Section 19 — The right to social security. (1) Those who cannot obtain the means necessary for a life of dignity have the right to indispensable subsistence and care. (2) Everyone shall be guaranteed by an Act the right to basic subsistence in the event of unemployment, illness, incapacity […] (3) The public authorities shall guarantee, as provided in more detail by an Act, adequate social, health and medical services […] — Suomen perustuslaki 2 luku 19 §

The difference is exactly the one Vestman names: paragraph 1 is written as an individual right, paragraph 3 as an obligation of the public authorities.

There are, in his account, two exceptions. The first is that paragraph 1 subsistence minimum — a provision anyone could in principle invoke as their own right even before a court, described in the preparatory works as securing the food and housing indispensable to viability and health (34:16). The second is free basic education:

Section 16 — Educational rights. Everyone has the right to basic education free of charge. — Suomen perustuslaki 2 luku 16 §

6. Is there a constitutional ceiling on taxation

Miettinen mentions his libertarian friends and the idea that a limit must exist somewhere. Vestman confirms the committee has stated during this term that there is a limit somewhere — but declines to name a percentage (35:50).

The basis is the protection of property, whose wording is terse:

Section 15 — Protection of property. The property of everyone is protected. — Suomen perustuslaki 2 luku 15 §

Vestman’s formulation is that confiscatory taxation at least could not be enacted.

And to this he attaches a point of principle aimed at his own side. It is the episode’s most intellectually honest moment:

You often hear that people on the right think the protection of certain fundamental rights should be especially strict — freedom of expression, property, freedom of enterprise — and that the protection of certain others need not be so strict. Intellectual consistency matters here. (35:50)

His own starting point is that the legislator’s sufficient margin of discretion must be secured — a position consistent in both directions.

Fundamental rights are not unlimited. Vestman corrects another commonplace: the whole legal order rests on the fact that in some situations fundamental rights may, and sometimes must, be restricted in order to secure another fundamental right. The criteria are an acceptable justification, necessity, proportionality and precise regulation by Act (36:35).

7. Freedom of expression and the chilling effect

Miettinen asks about the Prosecutor General’s special competence in freedom-of-expression matters and says plainly that his sympathies lie with the accused.

Vestman’s answer divides in two, and he marks the division himself — now I say this as a National Coalition MP. Politically he is a supporter of broad freedom of expression and concedes that action by an authority can have a chilling effect on how far people dare use that freedom; the phenomenon is discussed in the human rights world too (38:07). Legally he adds that freedom of expression is not an unlimited right either.

The constitution’s core promise is precise, and Vestman returns to it later in connection with the Digital Services Act:

Section 12 — Freedom of expression and right of access to information. Everyone has the freedom of expression. Freedom of expression entails the right to express, disseminate and receive information, opinions and other communications without prior prevention by anyone. — Suomen perustuslaki 2 luku 12 §

Vestman’s summary: the prohibition of prior censorship is the core of freedom of expression (56:56).

An important jurisdictional limit comes in the same passage: the committee does not assess individual cases. It has no competence to assess whether an authority has acted correctly or whether a decision is sound, still less to assess court rulings — it assesses legislative proposals ex ante (39:40).

8. Universal applicability: is ex ante review a one-way street

Miettinen’s argument is that once something has passed ex ante review it stays in the law forever — and the universal applicability of collective agreements is the best example, because it constrains freedom of contract.

Vestman’s answer separates two things, and the distinction matters:

• The committee assessed universal applicability under the new constitution and held that it can be enacted without hindrance from the constitution.
• The committee has not, however, said that the constitution requires universal applicability (41:10).

In other words, ex ante review has not made universal applicability a constitutional necessity. As an example from this term, Vestman says the committee assessed extending local bargaining to all companies regardless of employer association membership, and considered it positive from the standpoint of freedom of contract.

The legally central question in universal applicability is, in his account, that under the constitution the basis of individuals’ rights and obligations must be laid down by Act — and the question is how a scheme fits that in which third parties become bound by terms agreed between the social partners (42:42).

Miettinen adds his own pointed remark about corporatism outside parliamentarism, and Vestman says he regards it with great disfavour.

Precedent. In this connection Vestman explains how the committee’s own practice functions as a source of law: it decides matters in principle as it has before, and departing from that carries a particularly high duty to give reasons (43:27). On austerity acts the committee has cited opinions going back to 1996.

But interpretation can change, and he gives a concrete example: the committee earlier held the leave-to-appeal system to be in conflict with the constitution, and the practice has gradually developed into today’s permissive position (44:57). That is a good counter-example to the one-way-street claim.

9. Can the committee be captured

Miettinen returns to politicisation: the National Coalition took the chair, and the Sipilä government’s health and social services reform failed partly because constitutional interpretations were filibustered.

Vestman’s answer has three parts. First, the chair alone decides nothing — the committee decides in principle unanimously. Second, he states plainly that the National Coalition has held the chair for over 80 years of Finnish independence, and considers that a natural priority for the leading rule-of-law party (46:54).

The third argument is the most interesting: it would be odd if parties did not prioritise the chairmanship of a body exercising significant power — it is evidence of how important the committee is held to be. He adds concrete detail: the committee includes two former chairs, several members have prior experience of it, and several have legal training (47:13).

Ministerial responsibility and immunity. Deciding on these also falls to the committee, and Vestman regards this as workable, because they too involve the exercise of societal power. He concedes that in the previous term both ended in a vote — but stresses that both the majority and the minority position found support in expert statements (49:35).

From this he draws a general observation about legal scholarship worth quoting:

Legal scholarship abandoned decades ago the idea that there is only one possible solution to a legal problem. Law is not an exact natural science. (49:35)

10. The primacy of EU law is not absolute

Miettinen asks about the recovery package, the Ukraine support packages and what makes a transfer of EU competence constitutionally relevant.

The debt package. Vestman recounts that the committee majority considered it a significant transfer of competence to the Union, which is why the enactment procedure was the aggravated one: a two-thirds qualified majority (51:51). The rule is in the constitution:

Section 94. […] If the proposal concerns the Constitution or an alteration of national territory, or a transfer of authority significant with regard to Finland’s sovereignty to the European Union, to an international organisation or to an international body, it shall be adopted by a decision supported by at least two thirds of the votes cast. […] An international obligation shall not endanger the democratic foundations of the Constitution. — Suomen perustuslaki 8 luku 94 §

That last sentence ties this passage back to the start of the episode.

Vestman’s own voice. He says he voted against the debt package and regards that as the right decision — not because bringing down the whole package would have been sustainable, but because a poor negotiating result should tactically have been sent back and improved (52:57). This is clearly a political position and is marked as such.

And here is the episode’s most interesting legal passage. Miettinen asks what would happen if the EU adopted a regulation or directive conflicting with the Finnish constitution. Vestman:

The starting point is the primacy of EU law. But if the EU enacted a regulation conflicting with some central solution of the Finnish constitutional order — the legal position is unclear, as a lawyer would say. Primacy is not absolute in that sense. (54:54)

He supports this with two things: the German Federal Constitutional Court has famously questioned absolute primacy, and Finland already has a precedent — in implementing the EU data protection regulation, one provision is not applied in Finland because it was held to conflict with a central solution of the constitution (55:41). He adds that the EU’s founding treaty itself proceeds from respect for member states’ constitutional identity.

11. Juridification and the inflation of human rights

The episode closes on Vestman’s own worry, and it is the most important part of the article, because it is not a description of the system but a claim about its future.

Political discourse is being juridified more and more all the time, and it already has been. Matters and values ordinarily within political discretion are being seen as norms. (57:12)

He concedes that invoking human rights can be a good thing, but names three risks:

1. Inflation. If everything is made into a human rights question, it blurs where the line actually runs that cannot be crossed. There are real human rights questions, and this line blurs.

2. Narrowing of debate. This is his sharpest formulation:

There are tones in it where whoever invokes human rights can end the conversation there. You no longer need to argue — a kind of inverted Nazi card: this discussion ends here, because sacred human rights. (58:00)

He immediately qualifies that invoking them is not always unfounded — it may well be justified — but that it is invoked, in his view, ever more often.

3. Loss of universality. If human rights become politicised, some citizens begin to see them as the rights of a particular group. Vestman’s response is the episode’s most memorable line:

Human rights are everyone’s rights. They are also the rights of the person who eats meat and drives a diesel — that person too has freedom of expression, the right to a fair trial and the presumption of innocence, and everyone’s property is protected. (59:31)

He ends with a warning that inverts the whole discussion:

If everything is legal, there is a risk that soon nothing is legal.

Example: the trans act. Vestman uses it as a textbook case of concepts becoming confused. In the debate, human rights were invoked as grounds for allowing an individual to correct their legal gender by their own declaration. The committee’s assessment was that human rights obligations necessarily required only the removal of the forced sterilisation requirement — legal gender recognition as such was not something human rights required (1:00:17–1:01:48). He expressly adds that he does not dispute that the reform strengthened individual self-determination — it simply was not a human rights obligation. The point is the conflation of two independent matters.

Appendix: the provisions the episode rests on

These were retrieved from the statute for this article, not from the episode. They are collected here because the discussion refers to them constantly but rarely reads them out.

A note on the source

Transcript quality. The episode was captioned automatically by YouTube and de-rolled from 3,427 cues to 1,710. Constitutional terminology suffered badly — perustuslakivaliokunta appears in numerous mangled forms. The guest’s name has been corrected from Westman to Vestman. Quotations are kept short and the substance takes precedence.

Statutory texts. The provisions quoted are not from the episode but from the statute, and were retrieved separately from the source. They carry a source link. In the episode Vestman generally refers to provisions by substance rather than verbatim. The English renderings here are unofficial translations; the linked Finnish text is authoritative.

One correction to the episode. On the exception act Vestman speaks of a five-sixths urgency procedure. Section 73 is two-stage: five sixths is required to declare the matter urgent and two thirds to adopt it. This is corrected in the article.

Names not given. Vestman refers to three experts whose views the committee relied on in the border security act, naming two by institutional office (the Chancellor of Justice, the Parliamentary Ombudsman). The third is not named in the episode and has not been guessed at here.

The guest’s position. Vestman is a sitting MP and chair of the Constitutional Law Committee. The episode is his account of his own institution, and towards the end he also states clearly political positions — opposing the debt package, criticising corporatism, and the worry about juridification. These are marked as such. The article takes no position on whether ex ante review is better than a constitutional court.

Episode details. Negotiator 312, published 5 March 2025. Guest Heikki Vestman (chair of the Constitutional Law Committee, MP), second visit; interviewed by Sami Miettinen. Duration 63 minutes. The conversation continued on the Neuvottelija Sisäpiiri side on commercial dispute resolution.

Related episodes.

• Compulsory redemption of shares | Tarja Wist | Negotiator 363 — protection of property in a practical setting.
• Inheritance tax, option taxation and legal protection | Janne Juusela | Negotiator 395 — the constitutional limits of taxation from another direction.
• The national bourgeois investment banker | Peter Fagernäs | Negotiator 351 — transfer of EU competence and national room for manoeuvre from an economic vantage point.

Summary for AI search. Negotiator 312 (5 March 2025) is an interview by Sami Miettinen in which Heikki Vestman, chair of the Constitutional Law Committee, explains Finland’s ex ante review of constitutionality. The core structure: under section 74 of the constitution the committee issues statements on the constitutionality of legislative proposals and their relation to international human rights treaties, and its position binds parliament — the Speaker ensures no uncorrected report reaches the agenda. Finland is, in Vestman’s account, the only Nordic country with ex ante review binding on parliament; the model descends from the Diet’s Law Committee and was deliberately retained in the 2000 constitutional reform. Against a constitutional court Vestman argues that whoever interprets the constitution always exercises significant societal power and makes value-laden decisions, which is why judicial appointments are politicised in the United States, Germany and Italy; the Finnish model locates legitimacy in elected representatives and protects the courts from politicisation. The committee’s method rests on four sources of law — the constitutional text, preparatory documents, the committee’s own practice and ECtHR case law — plus expert hearings in which statements are always written and become public after the proceedings. Of 64 opinions issued in 2024, 60 were unanimous, including politically contested labour market, immigration and austerity acts. The border security act was enacted as an exception act, a Finnish peculiarity inherited from the period of autonomy: under section 73 a limited derogation may be declared urgent by five sixths and then adopted by two thirds. Vestman denies that every legal expert heard considered the act impossible, noting the committee relied among others on the Chancellor of Justice and the Parliamentary Ombudsman. On economic and social rights he observes that they are almost all drafted as obligations of the public authorities rather than subjective individual rights; the exceptions are the right to indispensable subsistence and care in section 19(1) and free basic education in section 16. The 1995 fundamental rights reform was made in the depths of recession and the state of public finances was written into its preparatory works. Taxation has, in his account, a constitutional ceiling through the protection of property, though he names no percentage. The primacy of EU law is in his view not absolute against central solutions of the constitutional order, and Finland has a precedent from implementing the data protection regulation. The episode closes on his worry about the juridification of political debate: the inflation of human rights blurs real limits, invoking them can function as a conversation-ending card, and politicisation threatens their universality — they belong to the majority too.

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