The Christian Democrats Rise, Feet on the Ground | Sari Essayah | Neuvottelija 185

A note on reading this

An election episode recorded two days before Finland’s April 2023 vote, in which a party leader speaks in her own name. Views are hers, forecasts are marked as forecasts, and competing parties are not represented here.

Summary

Sari Essayah, leader of the Christian Democrats, came on as the last candidate guest before the election, on the morning Yle’s final poll put her party past the Swedish People’s Party.

The coalition arithmetic outlasts the polling. Her party is in practice the only one not to have ruled anyone out in advance, from which follows the claim that no government may be formable without it. Her reasoning is that no Finnish party has ever taken over half the vote, so a coalition always has to be built — and that the capacity to cooperate is what matters when an unexpected crisis arrives.

On the EU her criticism is procedural. Finland’s positions have come late and vaguely, and have been communicated through several mouths at once. Her image for the right timing: a national position should already be moving when a directive is still a glint in the Commission’s eye. She applies the same demand to her own side, noting that the National Coalition’s MEP group split and one Finns Party MEP was absent on votes their parties had positions on at home. Substantively she objects to the nature restoration regulation on property-rights and cost grounds, and to the energy efficiency directive on geography — the Finnish building stock is already efficient.

On tax she rules out increases to work, enterprise and capital, while conceding the net wealth calculation rule can be examined, and corrects the notion that unlisted dividends are untaxed: that wealth has already been taxed once. She does not warm to a flat tax, and that disagreement with the interviewer is left standing.

Her most concrete policy is on unemployment benefit: extend earnings-related cover to everyone, since the state already funds 95 per cent of it and many young people work in atypical jobs without cover, but taper the level — explicitly not shorten the duration, as the National Coalition proposes. She puts the net effect of extension plus tapering at 148 million to the state on a four-step model, within a wider incentivising basic security run through the income register so that benefits respond smoothly rather than in jumps.

On the home care allowance she cites a comparison rarely made — that unemployment among childless men of the same age exceeds that among mothers on the allowance — but her actual proposal is to move parenthood costs onto an insurance basis on the Swedish model, so all employers contribute. That removes hidden discrimination against young women and, she argues, the need to police who is at home at all.

Agriculture is framed as security of supply: retail and food industry are profitable while the producer is not, the remedy is a cost index in the food market act, and rising rates are hitting young farmers with large investments hardest. Regional policy should reinforce existing strengths rather than pour money where things go worst, with regional tiering of the electricity tax on the Swedish model. Taxing powers for the wellbeing services counties draw her sharpest refusal, on the grounds that they would widen regional divergence, not only raise the tax rate.

The episode closes on race walking, which Essayah won a world title in, and on her answer to whether a final sprint is possible in it: with good technique, yes — and you always keep at least one foot on the ground.

Watch

The recording lives on the Neuvottelija channel: KD nousee jalat maassa | Sari Essayah | Neuvottelija 185. A Finnish edition of this episode is published at www.neuvottelija.fi.