---
title: "The Christian Democrats Rise, Feet on the Ground | Sari Essayah | Neuvottelija 185"
titleOriginal: "KD nousee jalat maassa | Sari Essayah | Neuvottelija 185"
episodeNumber: "185"
guest: "Sari Essayah"
datePublished: 2023-03-31
duration: "37:43"
youtube: "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kYSZiFluBsI"
originalLanguage: "fi"
topics: ["finnish_economy_policy","free_speech_society","leadership_governance"]
subtitleMethod: "none"
provenance: "Owner page assembled from YouTube metadata, the neuvottelija.fi episode record and a MacWhisper transcription of the Finnish audio. The chapter marks are the publisher's own list as released with the video, each verified to fall within ten seconds of a real transcript cue. No English caption track was produced, so no transcript is published here. This is an election episode in which a party leader speaks in her own name; the summary marks forecasts as forecasts and notes where interviewer and guest disagree."
fiCanonical: "https://www.neuvottelija.fi/fi/episodes/274-kd-nousee-jalat-maassa-sari-essayah-neuvottelija-185"
canonical: https://www.neuvottelija.com/podcast/episodes/ep185-kd-nousee-jalat-maassa-sari-essayah/
---
# The Christian Democrats Rise, Feet on the Ground | Sari Essayah | Neuvottelija 185

English subtitles are not available on this page. This is an episode summary, not a curated transcript.

## Chapters

- [00:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kYSZiFluBsI&t=0s) Introducing Sari Essayah; every guest standing as a candidate gets a return visit
- [00:28](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kYSZiFluBsI&t=28s) The Christian Democrats up 0.8 points in Yle's poll, past the Swedish People's Party
- [01:27](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kYSZiFluBsI&t=87s) Standing in Savo-Karelia as number 74. The Lapinlahti connection
- [02:10](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kYSZiFluBsI&t=130s) The party respects democracy and rules out no coalition partner
- [03:09](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kYSZiFluBsI&t=189s) The top three changing places; what advance votes mean for the party
- [05:15](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kYSZiFluBsI&t=315s) A centre-right conservative party, but close to the middle
- [06:23](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kYSZiFluBsI&t=383s) The government has to change — why is a change needed?
- [08:29](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kYSZiFluBsI&t=509s) Have the Centre Party and the Swedish People's Party lost credibility in a left-green government?
- [09:30](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kYSZiFluBsI&t=570s) The National Coalition losing ground to smaller parties; the Helsinki electoral alliance
- [10:54](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kYSZiFluBsI&t=654s) Is there an opposition in the EU? The government's lax EU policy
- [12:38](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kYSZiFluBsI&t=758s) The EU nature restoration regulation, and coordinating influence
- [16:47](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kYSZiFluBsI&t=1007s) Finland's high salaries are heavily taxed; the Social Democrats' capital tax plans
- [19:15](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kYSZiFluBsI&t=1155s) Essayah does not warm to a flat tax; earnings-related benefit must be reformed; work incentives matter
- [27:30](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kYSZiFluBsI&t=1650s) Strong regions; the party speaking for all of Finland; regional incentives
- [31:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kYSZiFluBsI&t=1860s) Taxing powers for the wellbeing services counties would not be fair, but reform is needed
- [34:40](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kYSZiFluBsI&t=2080s) Restoring the standing of Christian conservatism
- [36:47](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kYSZiFluBsI&t=2207s) Essayah on politics and race walking: the final sprint

## 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](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kYSZiFluBsI).
A Finnish edition of this episode is published at
[www.neuvottelija.fi](https://www.neuvottelija.fi/fi/episodes/274-kd-nousee-jalat-maassa-sari-essayah-neuvottelija-185).

---

Cite as: Sami Miettinen, Neuvottelija — The Christian Democrats Rise, Feet on the Ground | Sari Essayah | Neuvottelija 185, https://www.neuvottelija.com/podcast/episodes/ep185-kd-nousee-jalat-maassa-sari-essayah/, 2023-03-31. For quotes include episode 185 and timestamp.