Swedish Parliamentary Group’s measures for increasing employment, growth and investment

“We in SFP maintain that the focus of budget negotiations should be on promoting growth and confidence in the future, creating new jobs and inviting investments in Finland. We must now continue on the strong growth path that the government demonstrated during the spring’s framework negotiations. Finland cannot be lifted up by cuts and tax raises alone. We need long-sighted economic policy. Therefore we are presenting concrete measures to get people jobs, to maintain well-being and to enhance competitiveness,” says Otto Andersson, chair of the Swedish Parliamentary Group.

“We want to encourage our trade and industry representatives to carry out dialogues and negotiations. The government has already done a lot to improve conditions for commerce, with measures that the business sector has long been asking for. Our question to the sector is clear: what are you doing to enhance investments and employment right now? We want to challenge the sector to make efforts towards long-term growth and confidence. Together we can create a stronger economy and promote innovations that benefit Finland,” says SFP Party President, Minister of Education Anders Adlercreutz.

FINLAND’S ROAD TOWARDS GROWTH, PROSPERITY AND WELL-BEING 

We believe in Finland and in our opportunities. Foundations have been laid and now we need courage, trust in the future and self-confidence to create economic growth, to encourage companies to invest and grow, and to help people find employment.

The Swedish Parliamentary Group’s initiatives for increasing employment, growth and investment:

We want to increase tax incentives for investments in the green transition. The lower limit for investments that entitle companies to benefits must be lowered from EUR 50 million to EUR 10 million, and the incentive must be broadened to also apply to investing in carbon capture and storage, as well as in clean hydrogen production.

We want to start trialling negative income taxation. It will simplify regulations, reduce bureaucracy and help more people make their way out of financial difficulties. The model prevents incentive traps, enhances employment and modernises social security in line with changes in the labour market – especially with the impact of AI. The model is based on people with low or no income receiving support via taxation instead of complicated income transfers. No one should be given the runaround from one benefit provider to another.

We want Finland to be the smoothest-functioning country for those who want to move here to work and invest. We want to supplement the existing process with a point system for work-related immigration, following the Canadian model. We need to offer a two-week service guarantee for Finnish IDs, schools, early childhood education, bank accounts and work permits. 

We want the responsibility for parent leave costs to be spread more equally between employers. An important aspect of a good labour market is the ability to have a good work/life balance. For this purpose, we want to implement the Danish model, where parent allowances are mostly covered by taxation and partly by a parent allowance fund for employers. By solving the parent leave cost issue, we can reinforce the status of women in the labour market and increase the proportion of leave taken by men. The model also improves conditions for businesses, especially within female-dominated sectors. 

Further measures for:

WELL-BEING , PROFITABILITY AND EMPLOYMENT 

1. Develop legislation to reduce the psychosocial load of working life and improve well-being, as our existing system mostly accounts for physical loading while the labour market has changed.
2. Increase and develop cooperation between the business sector and education to ensure enough work placements are available for secondary and higher education students, and to enhance entrepreneurship education.
3. Count exchange studies as competence-enhancing activities that do not use up the time allocated for studies.
4. Implement smaller study units for flexible further education while working.
5. Develop more incentivising financing for employment and economic development services. Once they have been moved up from the local level, there will be better opportunities for meeting employment targets, while strengthening the municipalities’ responsibility.
6. Adopt anonymous recruitment in the public sector to combat all forms of discrimination.
7. Improve conditions for flexible employment opportunities for those with partial work ability, and invest more in job-oriented rehabilitation for young people.
8. Implement tax incentives for pensioners who want to stay in the workplace. Follow up on the effects of the careers workshop trial, which involved individual careers support for persons aged over 55.

BETTER CONDITIONS FOR GROWING BUSINESS

1. Double the number of months during which companies are entitled to start-up grants, to lower the threshold for starting up a business.
2. Investigate the impact of the positive credit register on the granting of business financing, to improve companies’ financing opportunities. Reduce national banking regulations that are making it hard to obtain loans for households and businesses.
3. Increase the limit for VAT liability to EUR 30,000 to make it easier for SMEs to operate.
4. Safeguard the cash flow of small businesses by ensuring that B2B receivables are paid on time. To achieve this, the Competition and Consumer Authority must be tasked with supervising the fulfilment of the Act on Payment Terms for Commercial Contracts.
5. Simplify regulations and reduce the administrative burden, to improve SMEs’ operating conditions.
6. Create a model that incentivises companies to employ people aged under 30 and those with partial work ability, among other things by checking employers’ social costs, for instance in line with a youth recruitment incentive. 
7. Remove obstacles to recruitment, for example in the form of needs testing of foreign labour. Finland needs net immigration of 40,000 people per annum.
8. Grant people the ability to work as soon as they have applied for a residence permit. Most of the residence permit application process must be possible to complete digitally, according to the single service point principle.
9. A temporary tax freeze of 3–4 years should be applied to sales of forests, to improve conditions for growth-oriented forestry.

INCREASED INNOVATION AND INVESTMENT IN FINLAND

1. Come up with an ambitious national export strategy for our clean tech and sustainable industry.
2. Create better conditions for test bed operations in Finland, i.e. environments where companies and research centres can develop and test new ideas in practice. 
3. Direct a larger proportion of increased state R&D financing to business-driven innovation, especially within sustainable industry, digitalisation and clean tech.
4. Create better incentives for collaboration between the business sector and higher education to promote innovation and closer cooperation between educators and employers, to ensure education matches the needs of the labour market.
5. Promote academic entrepreneurship, for example by improving the immaterial rights of researchers, postgraduates and teachers to discoveries made at work.
6. Reduce the ownership requirement for tax-free dividends from publicly listed companies from the current 10 per cent stake to also include smaller owners.
7. Encourage companies to invest in growth, research and development by reducing taxation for companies that reinvest their profits in their operations.
8. Improve collaboration between the state, municipalities and regions in relation to large-scale investments, for example via bridge agreements. The state must take a proactive role by contributing infrastructure to support investments and projects that enhance exports and imports.
9. The EU must have a well-functioning internal market for defence materials. We want to remove ineffective obstacles to financing to reinforce our domestic defence industry and European self-sufficiency.