In the European Union, 27 countries that differ in many ways are trying to make joint decisions.
It also depends on the particular issue, which country is in the same situation as, for example, Finland – and who is not affected by a problem at all.
We made the machine so that it would be possible to compare different countries. We chose variables that were as different as possible.
Some, such as the dependency ratio, defense budgets, immigration and the number of people with higher education, reflect the international debate on the future of Europe in particular.
Others, on the other hand, are measures of lifestyle or quality, such as living arrangements, access to care and life satisfaction.
There are also variables directly related to the European elections and the competence of the EU – and of course the Eurovisa winnings. The latest comparable information has been used in the machine. The statistics come from the years 2022–2024.
None of the variables tell you how things should be. Instead, they describe what Finland is like in relation to others. Examining different variables also gives you the opportunity to challenge your own preconceived notions: compared to other Europeans, are Finns, for example, highly educated and satisfied with their lives?
We made five interesting selections from the machine.
1. In Finland, an exceptionally large number of people feel that they do not get the treatment they need
Finns’ experiences of accessing treatment are bad compared to many other EU countries. Dissatisfaction continues to grow.
In 2022, 6.5 percent of Finns felt that they did not get the treatment they needed, while the EU average was 2.2 percent.
The percentage figure describes how many people feel that they have not received treatment because the journey or queue for treatment is too long or it is too expensive.
In Finland, dissatisfaction with access to treatment is only increasing. Leading researcher at the Institute of Health and Welfare (THL). Liina-Kaisa Tynkkynen says that Finland has stood out in the statistics for a long time.
According to him, what is particularly surprising is that those with a lower socioeconomic status report dissatisfaction with access to treatment even more often than others. The difference between the highest and lowest income groups is really big compared to many other countries, Tynkkynen says.
The survey does not reveal in more detail what the experiences stem from. In Finland, queues above all for public primary health care have been long, however.
Tynkkynen does not think that the experiences are due to too high expectations, because there are problems with the availability of services in Finland.
– One explanation for Finns’ experiences is our system, which divides the population into different services depending on whether it is covered by occupational health care or not or whether you can afford to pay for private services.
2. Finns are not as highly educated as they think
Finland is not fighting for the top spots in terms of the number of people with higher education. The investment will weaken even more in the future.
Finland is only the eighth country in the EU in terms of the number of people with higher education. In Finland, about 43 percent of people aged 25–64 have a university degree. Estonia, for example, has the same readings. Sweden is far ahead.
Aleksi Kalenius The Ministry of Education describes the figures as “slightly more worrying”.
In a nutshell, the situation is this: In developed countries, the new generation is usually more highly educated than the previous one. In Finland, this development stopped in the early 2000s.
So the older ones were still well educated, but the younger generations couldn’t overtake them.
In almost all other developed countries, the educational level of the new baby boomers has continued to rise in relation to the retiring baby boomers. That’s why more and more countries are surpassing Finland in the education level comparison of working-age people.
According to Kalenius, this is a problem. Well-being cannot increase if people are not as productive as possible at work.
– Lack of suitable education leads to unemployment, says Kalenius.
The most difficult thing to find employment is only for those who have completed elementary school.
Kalenius says that in Finland there has been a stubborn image of a hard, even too high level of education. That is why the worrying development has been noticed late.
In recent years, there have been more places to start higher education in Finland. In addition, those applying for their first university place are preferred in student selection.
Still, Finland’s curve will point downward for many more years.
3. Immigration to Finland breaks records, but is still small
About 50,000 foreign citizens arrived in Finland in 2022 with the intention of staying at least one year, which was a new record. Relative to the population, the number of arrivals was still the sixth lowest in the EU region.
Work-based immigration has often been hoped for as a solution to improving Finland’s supply ratio and the labor shortage. However, it does not increase by clicking fingers.
Having studied immigration for a long time Pasi Saukkonen points out that states compete fiercely for talent.
For example, when a Filipino nurse considers moving abroad, she weighs Finland as one option against Denmark, Norway, Holland and Britain.
It is even more difficult to increase migration to Finland from within the EU. Saukkonen says that throughout EU membership, only Estonia has received a greater number of immigrants within the EU region.
Although immigration in Finland is low compared to other EU countries, the amount has been increasing. Last year to Finland more than 70,000 people movedso again a new record.
It is difficult to predict the future. Not everyone who comes here stays. In addition, newcomers often move to a region that already has a community of their own nationality. Therefore, according to Saukkonen, it is pointless to dream of immigration as a great savior to the labor shortage in the whole of Finland.
– It is difficult to get people moving to Finland to move to areas where the population is moving out anyway. And to stay there.
4. Even a poor person can live alone in the Nordic countries
In Finland and other Nordic countries, a larger proportion of people live alone than in other parts of Europe. It is a sign of a welfare state.
The Nordic welfare states have made it possible for people to live alone, even if they have problems making ends meet.
This is how THL’s leading researcher sums it up Timo Kauppinen one of the reasons why Finland and the other Nordic countries are at the top of Europe in the number of one-person households.
– In many other countries, a person in trouble is more dependent on his family. Homelessness is also more common.
In Finland, the proportion of people living alone is the highest among EU countries, more than a quarter of the population.
Chief Actuary of Statistics Finland Mika Ronkainen living alone began to become more common in the 1960s and 1970s, when more and more Finns moved from the countryside to the city.
The birth rate has also been at a low level for a long time. Now the number of families with children is the lowest for decades.
In Finland, the number of single-person households has also been increased by the fact that here children move away from home at a young age. In Finland, people move to their own on average at the age of 21, while in Greece and Italy, for example, the corresponding figure is 30.
Many elderly people also live alone in Finland. The majority of elderly people living alone are women, as men have long died younger than women.
According to Ronkainen, this trend is slowly changing because men are living longer than before. However, nothing else indicates a decrease in the number of people living alone.
5. Voting in the European elections is not fun in Finland
In Finland, young people in particular rarely vote in the European elections, but other countries struggle with the same problem.
In the voting activity of the European elections, Finland is briskly below the EU average. Along with Finland, Hungary and Estonia are, for example, close at 40 percent.
No one thing explains Finland’s low voter turnout, says the professor Åsa von Schoultz from the University of Helsinki. Let’s try though.
First of all, there are many elections in Finland. In the ranking of many voters, the European elections fall below the national elections.
According to von Schoultz, it is a matter of the fact that many voters find it difficult to understand the meaning of their vote. That, in turn, is due to the structures of the EU.
There is no government and opposition in the European Parliament, but a majority must be built separately behind each issue to be decided.
Therefore, it can be difficult to understand the significance of whether the EPP (European People’s Party, the largest party in the European Parliament) has a few more or fewer seats.
In Finland, less than 30 percent of 18–34-year-olds voted in the 2019 election. Low voter turnout among young people is a problem for the whole of Europe. Throughout the continent, young people vote clearly less often than people aged 50–70.
According to the researchers, one explanation is that young people have less experience than their parents about how different decisions can affect their own lives.
The highest turnout is in Belgium, where voting is compulsory. People vote much more enthusiastically than Finland in, for example, Romania and Greece.
Von Schoultz says that voter turnout is unlikely to increase in Europe this year. He even predicts a great decline in Finland.