Since May 2, the Union Party, the True Finns, the Swedish People’s Party and the Christian Democrats have been negotiating about the future direction of Finnish politics.
The past week has been about immigration and climate policy and the talks have been marred by major contradictions, above all between the bourgeois Swedish People’s Party, SFP, and the nationalist True Finns.
– What makes it problematic, especially in the matter of immigration, is that a party that participates in the government negotiations – the Swedish People’s Party – has critical issues that are in practice the opposite of our critical issues, said Riikka Purra, chairman of the True Finns, to EPN earlier this week.
Late on Thursday evening, a consensus had not yet been reached and the True Finns demanded that the negotiations be interrupted if there was still no agreement by 6 p.m. the following day, reports Swedish EPN.
SFP pending
On Friday afternoon, however, it was clear that the negotiations would continue, and later in the evening the Samlingspartiet’s Petteri Orpo announced that there is now “a paper ready on both topics”.
According to the Swedish People’s Party’s Anna-Maja Henriksson, they could not directly approve the documentation on immigration, but the party is expected to raise the issue internally on Saturday morning, reports Swedish EPN.
– Tomorrow we will carefully go through what is on the table so we know how to proceed, says Anna-Maja Henriksson, party leader of the Swedish People’s Party.
Henriksson adds that her party is ready to continue negotiating even if the parliamentary group does not approve the basis on Saturday.
– We are here to establish a government and we are prepared to continue negotiating, says Anna-Maja Henriksson.
Historically, Finland’s government negotiations have taken an average of 1.5 months.