Finland 2018
Yearbook 2018
Finland. The world’s happiest people live in Finland, according to the UN annual World Happiness Report. And not only that – the happiest immigrants also live in Finland. In this year’s survey, which was published in March, Finland climbed five placements and passed countries such as Norway, Denmark, Iceland and Switzerland. First in ninth place comes Sweden.
- According to Abbreviationfinder: FIN is an three letter acronym for Finland.
January 28 was the presidential election. As expected, the big favorite, the leader of the bourgeois Socialist Party and the incumbent president, Sauli Niinistö won by as much as 62.7% of the vote. In addition, he was elected without the need for a second round of elections. His main rival, Pekka Haavisto from the Greens, received no more than 12.4%. At the same time, the left parties, with Social Democrats Tuula Haatainen and the Left Association’s Merja Kyllönen, made a historically poor choice and ended up together at less than 10%. Voter turnout was relatively low, 69.9% compared to the previous presidential election, which was 72.8%. According to Countryaah.com, Helsinki is the capital city of Finland, a country located in Northern Europe. The election result now gave Niinistö an ever-increasing turnaround, primarily in foreign policy.
In March, Nordea shareholders voted in favor of the relocation of the head office from Stockholm to Helsinki. A total of 95.8% voted in favor of the proposal. Finland’s Finance Minister Petteri Orpo was delighted with the message and tweeted “Welcome to Finland”. According to Orpo, Finland’s membership of the EU’s banking union is good for a major bank like Nordea. The official move took place on October 1st.
Former regional president of Catalonia Carles Puigdemont visited Finland and the MP for the Center Mikko Kärnä in March. In connection with the visit, an international arrest warrant was issued against Puigdemont, who, however, had to leave the country and return to Belgium where he lives in exile.
In June, the verdict came against Abderrahman Bouanane, who killed two women and injured another eight people in a knife attack in Turku in August 2017. He was sentenced to life in prison for murder and attempted terrorism. The motive for the killings was according to Bouanane Finland’s supposed involvement in the Syrian war.
On July 16, a summit was held in Helsinki between US President Donald Trump and Russian Federation President Vladimir Putin. President Sauli Niinistö hosted the meeting between the two world leaders. On the agenda were the Syrian war and the situation in Ukraine (Crimea) and, possibly, the alleged Russian involvement in the US presidential election 2016. Finland’s largest newspaper Helsingin Sanomat conducted an advertising campaign with the message “Mr President, welcome to the country with free press” – a message perhaps addressed to both world leaders.
In September, a vote of no confidence was made in Parliament against Foreign Minister Timo Soini from the New Alternative. During a visit to Canada in May, Soini participated in a demonstration against abortions, something the Chancellor of Justice called “problematic”. Of the 200 members of Parliament, Soini received support from 100 while 60 wanted him to step down.
In November, Finland was drawn into the debate over the serious fires in California. This was told by President Sauli Niinistö at a meeting in Paris to US President Donald Trump on how his country is doing to avoid forest fires. “I told him that Finland is a forest-covered nation, but that we have a good surveillance system.” Trump, who has been criticized for blaming the California forest fires for poor forest management, now says that Finland “spends a lot of time raking and cleaning and doing things. And they have no problems. ” Niinistö, however, denies that he would have said anything about raking leaves.
Helsinki
Helsinki, capital of Finland, located in Uusimaa, on the south coast of the country; 214 km2, 645 179 residents (2018), of which 6 percent are Swedish-speaking and 8 percent with a mother tongue other than Finnish or Swedish. In 2017, the metropolitan region had 1. 5 million residents, which corresponds to just over 20 percent of the country’s total population. In addition to the Helsinki, Espoo, Grankulla and Vantaa municipalities, the Metropolitan Region’s cooperation delegation includes. Helsinki is beautifully located on a promontory on the Gulf of Finland with an archipelago outside, where, for example, the fortress Sveaborg is located. Helsinki has the University of Helsinki, the Technical University, the Swedish School of Economics, the Helsinki School of Economics and the Sibelius Academy.
Business
Helsinki and the southern coast were the area of Finland that was first industrialized to a greater extent. Today, there are about 17% of the country’s workplaces in Helsinki and 30% in total in the metropolitan area. The service sector accounts for 85% of the workplaces in the city. In Helsinki there are, among other things, government agencies, the Riksdag, negotiating organizations, marketing and import activities and service industries such as banking and insurance. The port is the largest in the country.
Communications
The Helsinki passenger port receives about 8. 5 million people annually. Ferry services are available to Mariehamn, Stockholm, Travemünde and Tallinn. Helsinki has two airports, Helsinki-Vantaa and Malm’s airfields (Helsinki-Vantaa and Helsinki-Malmi). Helsinki-Vantaa Airport, located in the neighboring city of Vantaa, is Finland’s largest international airport with about 9 million passengers in international traffic and about 2. 9 million in domestic traffic. Malm’s airfield is only used to a small extent. Passenger traffic by rail can be divided into local traffic to neighboring municipalities, long distance traffic in the home country and foreign traffic to the Russian Federation. Helsinki is the only city in Finland to have a functioning tramway in the city center and metro (inaugurated in 1982). In addition, the city is surrounded by a dense bus network.
