---
title: "The Government as a Culture-War Target | Sari Essayah | Neuvottelija 201"
titleOriginal: "Sari Essayah Hallitus kulttuurisodan maalina | Sari Essayah | Neuvottelija 201"
episodeNumber: "201"
guest: "Sari Essayah"
datePublished: 2023-07-07
duration: "46:06"
youtube: "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jkfGKJ3igBw"
originalLanguage: "fi"
topics: ["finnish_economy_policy","leadership_governance","free_speech_society"]
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, translated into English here and left on the publisher's timecodes; all but two fall within ten seconds of a real transcript cue and the remaining two within thirteen. No English caption track was produced, so no transcript is published here. The transcription contains no gaps. The cleaned Finnish cue file corrects mangled proper names and organisation names against the publisher's own chapter list and show notes (Rydman, Lindtman, Aftonbladet, Aino-Kaisa Pekonen, Elsi Katainen, Sanni Grahn-Laasonen, Veljesapu-Perinneyhdistys, Königstedt); numeric values were not altered. This is an episode of opinionated party politics recorded during a live controversy: the summary reports the guest's structural arguments attributed to her, marks her expectations about the restoration regulation vote as expectations rather than outcomes, and does not repeat unverified claims about named third parties beyond what the publisher's own show notes state. The transcript carries no speaker labels, but with a single guest the speakers are reliably distinguishable."
fiCanonical: "https://www.neuvottelija.fi/fi/episodes/296-sari-essayah-hallitus-kulttuurisodan-maalina-sari-essayah-ne"
canonical: https://www.neuvottelija.com/podcast/episodes/ep201-hallitus-kulttuurisodan-maalina-sari-essayah/
---
# The Government as a Culture-War Target | Sari Essayah | Neuvottelija 201

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=jkfGKJ3igBw&t=0s) Sari Essayah, a central minister
- [00:14](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jkfGKJ3igBw&t=14s) A bumpy start and the urge to get on with the programme
- [01:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jkfGKJ3igBw&t=60s) Essayah and Elina Valtonen wrongly linked to Junnila's motion in Ilta-Sanomat, and the attempts to turn it into an international story
- [06:35](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jkfGKJ3igBw&t=395s) Junnila and Lindtman in Nazi-themed images in the foreign press; Junnila's resignation and Rydman's appointment
- [07:49](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jkfGKJ3igBw&t=469s) Culture war — Finland's permanent new condition, or a by-product of missing political substance?
- [09:15](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jkfGKJ3igBw&t=555s) Agriculture and forestry is a congenial portfolio for Essayah
- [10:25](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jkfGKJ3igBw&t=625s) The ministry's EU dimension; the restoration regulation on a knife edge
- [11:25](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jkfGKJ3igBw&t=685s) How do the Christian Democrats differ from the Centre Party?
- [12:35](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jkfGKJ3igBw&t=755s) Section 6.6 of the programme: from support packages and crisis funds to a decent price and a viable livelihood
- [15:03](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jkfGKJ3igBw&t=903s) Unsustainable price pressure on farming and the factors adding to costs
- [16:18](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jkfGKJ3igBw&t=978s) Finland's concentrated retail structure as the problem
- [17:20](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jkfGKJ3igBw&t=1040s) Did the Christian Democrats block wine in grocery shops? The argument on alcohol policy
- [19:01](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jkfGKJ3igBw&t=1141s) Should Finland become an EU wine-producing country? The effect on agricultural subsidies
- [20:50](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jkfGKJ3igBw&t=1250s) Is the government pursuing strategic EU negotiating objectives? Ministerial weight in key negotiations
- [23:20](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jkfGKJ3igBw&t=1400s) The government's relationship with Finland's MEPs
- [25:50](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jkfGKJ3igBw&t=1550s) How the programme is built and what it means for portfolios; prime minister and finance minister the only certainties
- [26:40](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jkfGKJ3igBw&t=1600s) Was one and a half portfolios a negotiating win for the Christian Democrats? What the half portfolio means
- [28:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jkfGKJ3igBw&t=1680s) Three portfolios at the education ministry; the government invests in education
- [29:20](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jkfGKJ3igBw&t=1760s) Is the left-right culture war frustration at the lack of easy political targets? The absurdity of like-stalking
- [31:10](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jkfGKJ3igBw&t=1870s) The government's esprit de corps
- [32:40](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jkfGKJ3igBw&t=1960s) Is Petteri Orpo (National Coalition) a good prime minister?
- [34:40](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jkfGKJ3igBw&t=2080s) Is Riikka Purra (Finns Party) a hard, strong leader, or an escalating one?
- [35:50](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jkfGKJ3igBw&t=2150s) What is working with Anna-Maja Henriksson (Swedish People's Party) like?
- [37:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jkfGKJ3igBw&t=2220s) Shared and diverging interests and values among government MPs (the Helsingin Sanomat values map)
- [38:35](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jkfGKJ3igBw&t=2315s) Is Finnish consensus breaking down? Extremist movement on the far right and far left; the NATO process
- [39:50](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jkfGKJ3igBw&t=2390s) What is it about the right-wing government that irritates? The left's inability to reform; aiming at a good Nordic level in social security and the labour market
- [43:05](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jkfGKJ3igBw&t=2585s) Did you negotiate the wellbeing services counties' taxation powers out of the programme? Shared commitment to the county strategy
- [44:15](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jkfGKJ3igBw&t=2655s) Flattening the cost trajectory and saving taxpayers' money
- [45:10](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jkfGKJ3igBw&t=2710s) A good holiday, and a return to normal government work in the autumn
- [46:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jkfGKJ3igBw&t=2760s) Join the #neuvottelija inner circle for Essayah's thoughts on her race-walking career and her coaches

## Summary

**Sari Essayah** — chair of the Christian Democrats and minister of agriculture and forestry in
Petteri Orpo's government — reviews the government's bumpy start, the summer of scandal labelled a
culture war, and the substantive politics buried underneath it.

## The starting point: a misread voting list

The first section concerns a case in which Essayah and foreign minister **Elina Valtonen**
were linked, in an Ilta-Sanomat story, to a budget motion tabled by Wilhelm Junnila.
Essayah's account of what happened is this: the vote was not the one the story presented
it as — the paper had misread the voting lists, and the vote she and Valtonen took part in
concerned support for the over-indebted. The motion itself concerned funding for the
**Veljesapu-Perinneyhdistys**, an association operating under the veterans' umbrella body
**Tammenlehvän Perinneliitto**, and ministers Li Andersson, Krista Kiuru and Aino-Kaisa
Pekonen had granted funding to the same budget line during the previous government's term.

According to Essayah, the journalist asked neither minister for comment before
publication. A correction appeared the following morning, not on the front page but at the
foot of the article. An editor apologised — after Essayah rang the paper herself.

The episode does not go into the Junnila, Rydman or Lindtman cases beyond noting that they
happened that week. Essayah's own point is about procedure: once a story has been
translated into the international press it stays alive, because corrections are not picked
up with the same enthusiasm.

## The diagnosis: culture war as a by-product of missing substance

Essayah's explanation for the summer is structural rather than personal. Government work
had not yet become concrete — no bills had been introduced and the first budget was still
being drafted — so there was no political substance to get hold of, and the debate
circled around it instead. Miettinen puts the same point later: the culture war is
frustration at not being able to fight a political battle with the means an unremarkable
programme provides.

Both treat **"like-stalking"** — working out who has liked whose posts and deriving chains
of endorsement from it — as the illustration of where this ends. Essayah is careful to
hold that the press *should* investigate backgrounds and assess critically; her claim is
about care, not about the watchdog role. A clickbait headline is subject to the same
journalistic principles as a printed story.

## Agriculture and forestry

The portfolio suits her: over the two previous parliamentary terms the Christian Democrats
were the only party to table an interpellation on agriculture. The substantive content
concentrates on three things.

**Income distribution along the food chain.** Section 6.6 of the government programme
shifts the emphasis from support packages and crisis funds towards the price paid for the
product covering its cost. In Essayah's phrase: the workman is worthy of his hire, and so
is the farmer. Last year's cost crisis made visible how unevenly the return is distributed
within the chain.

**Retail concentration.** Finland has only a handful of grocery chains — Essayah calls it
"a fairly oligopolistic market" — which leaves the producer in a weak negotiating
position. REKO rings and direct farm sales are raised as partial routes around it; they
work for some product groups and less well for meat that has to pass through an abattoir.
The programme promises to ease permitting for farm-level and small abattoirs.

**The alcohol compromise.** Asked directly whether the eight per cent limit was a
Christian Democrat blocking move, Essayah answers plainly. Other parties wanted wine in
grocery shops; her argument for the limit is that if 75 per cent of alcohol sales move to
the shops there is no longer a monopoly, and none could be defended to the Commission —
and spirits would follow. The limit was drawn on two conditions: **eight per cent** and
**produced by fermentation**, which leaves alcopop-type products outside. Miettinen, who
lived in London for thirteen years, says he disagrees but recognises the argument.

## EU influence and the restoration regulation

This is the episode at its most topical and also at its most clearly **predictive**: at
the time of recording the restoration regulation was about to be voted on in the
parliamentary plenary. Essayah's picture is that the proposal has fallen in all three
committees and that the EPP has decided it wants to defeat it; she says she intends to
spend the following week meeting MEPs still weighing their position — Elsi Katainen
among them — and estimates that Renew Europe will split roughly
down the middle. *What the plenary actually did is outside this episode.*

The more general claim is procedural: Finland relies too heavily on the civil-service
level. Real influence, in Essayah's account, requires a minister on the move and personal
meetings early enough — and alliances with other forested countries.

## How the government machine works

**Why portfolios are allocated after the programme.** If the plots were divided in the
opening rounds, everyone would arrange congenial matters for themselves and push the
uncongenial onto others. So: programme first, portfolios second, and only then do the
parties decide who fills them.

**The half portfolio.** Miettinen recalls that political journalist Marko Junkkari, on
this same programme, judged the Christian Democrats unlikely to get more than one
portfolio. Essayah counts the half — a youth, sport and physical activity portfolio for
the final two years — as a successful negotiating outcome. The start is nonetheless heavy
going: she is her party's only minister.

**Three portfolios at the education ministry** is, she says, unprecedented and a measure
of weight. Education was a sector not cut, and roughly **€200 million** of additional
investment was made.

**Assessments of the other leaders.** On Orpo: a conciliatory style that does not take a
position first is the leadership of this age — Miettinen says he had thought him too
risk-averse but judges that this is exactly what suits a prime minister. On Purra: a
demandingness and refusal to yield driven by pressure from her own base, but also a
sensitivity and a capacity to listen. On Henriksson and the Swedish People's Party:
pragmatic, uncomplicated competence, and after the summer's crisis meetings the
Königstedt retreat mattered. Essayah's own definition of a strong leader is servant
leadership, not a patriarch banging the table.

## A consensus that may be breaking

The broadest claim in the closing stretch is historical. The Finnish habit has been to
absorb extremist movements into the mainstream — the far right before the wars, the far
left after them — and to draw them into building the society. An American-style split into
two camps would be a departure from that. Miettinen adds his own reading that the NATO
process healed the left.

Both read the same thing from Helsingin Sanomat's values map: on the economic-right axis
the governing parties are "scattered but still bundled", where the previous government's
spread was wider.

## Social security: the episode's strongest numerical argument

Essayah states that Finland has **twice as many people on last-resort income support as
Sweden**. Because this is the safety net of last resort, the figure indicates on her
reading that something in the system is badly wrong and that it is passivating. The answer
is a single unified basic benefit that remains needs-based and conditional — not a
citizen's income — followed by reform of the housing allowance. She separates out those
who are genuinely not fit for work: their place is not on the receiving end of employment
administration contacts.

The wellbeing services counties did not get taxation powers. Essayah says hardly anyone
was proposing them, but that the parties wanted the point written down. Health and social
care reform needs repair — it has a structural defect — but the basic structure will not
be dismantled immediately, because the counties have only just started.

**The cost trajectory.** Essayah corrects the headlines that spoke of €1.5 billion cut
from health and social care: more than €4 billion is being added, and the €1.5 billion is
taken off the cost trajectory that would otherwise materialise — which she puts at over €6
billion. Miettinen notes drily that this is economic-right vocabulary: not cuts but
savings of citizens' money. Essayah keeps the term.

---

Cite as: Sami Miettinen, Neuvottelija — The Government as a Culture-War Target | Sari Essayah | Neuvottelija 201, https://www.neuvottelija.com/podcast/episodes/ep201-hallitus-kulttuurisodan-maalina-sari-essayah/, 2023-07-07. For quotes include episode 201 and timestamp.