Disagreements over funding policies for the social and healthcare sector are threatening to tip Finland’s coalition government into crisis.
A rift between the four parties making up Finland’s coalition government deepened further on Tuesday when 10 Swedish People’s Party (SPP) MPs abstained from voting in a confidence motion on Minister of Social Affairs and Health Wille Rydman of the Finns Party.
Rydman survived the confidence motion by 88 votes to 74, but the decision by the SPP parliamentary group to not back their coalition colleague has highlighted the fault lines in Prime Minister Petteri Orpo‘s government, which has less than a year left in its legislative term.
“The starting point is always to vote in favour of the government and its ministers, so in that sense I am not pleased with the voting result,” Orpo told reporters after Tuesday’s plenary session.
The vote was called because the opposition Left Alliance submitted a motion of no confidence in Rydman after he proposed new criteria for granting STEA funding to social and healthcare organisations — before the matter had been agreed within the government.
STEA, known in English as the Funding Centre for Social Welfare and Health Organisations, provides grants to non-profit organisations operating in the social and healthcare sectors.
Rydman’s actions led to a dispute between the coalition partners, which in turn saw the Finns Party lose a vote on Rydman’s proposals at a government meeting on Tuesday morning.
Orpo told the press conference on Tuesday afternoon that the STEA funding issue will now be reviewed and the process restarted.
Purra outraged
Speaking at the same press conference, Finance Minister and Finns Party leader Riikka Purra said she was outraged by the SPP’s decision not to back Rydman.
“I see it as being more than just a strike against the Finns Party, it’s also pulling the rug out from under the prime minister’s feet, which I find quite concerning,” Purra said.
SPP leader and Education Minister Anders Adlercreutz explained that the party’s MPs decided to abstain from Tuesday’s confidence vote because the coalition’s agreed-upon practices had not been honoured in this case.
“Today we all cast blank ballots. This means we consider what happened to be serious. The government is not functional if agreements are not kept. We didn’t vote red [no confidence in Rydman] because we want government cooperation to continue, and we don’t want to make this into a bigger crisis,” Adlercreutz said.
Questions unanswered
The apparent scrapping of Rydman’s proposals — and the lack of time left before parliament’s summer recess — will leave many questions unanswered over the summer, especially for organisations in the social and healthcare sector working on funding applications.
According to Rydman, these organisations should prepare to apply for funding based on the criteria he has outlined, but Adlercreutz argued that — without an agreement on the new guidelines — the old criteria are still valid.
“There seem to be difficulties, but we’ll try to persevere,” Rydman told reporters when asked about the government’s future cooperation.
