Finland’s child benefit system may undergo a “major change”, according to newsgroup Uutissuomalainen.
Russia has a new media darling in Finland, according to newspaper Ilta-Sanomat.
The tabloid reported that Russian news outlets incorrectly refer to Armando Mema — a 32 year-old accountant with an Albanian-Italian background — as a “Finnish politician” and an “expert” with political influence.
Among other things, the outlets have characterised Mema as a “voice of reason”, as he has suggested that Russia is not a threat to Europe — and that Europe should stop supporting Ukraine to fight Russian aggression, the paper explained.
According to IS, Mema’s presence in the news has regularly brought his name to the top of Yandex searches about “Finland” or “Finns”. There are “hundreds” of articles about the man who lives in Southern Finland’s Nurmijärvi municipality.
Some outlets backed up the man’s alleged political expertise with photos of him posing in Finland’s Parliament House in Helsinki.
They often describe him as a member of “the Finnish national-conservative Freedom League party”, without clarifying that no such party — nor Mema himself — is in the legislature, the paper said.
However, Mema has been involved in politics in Finland, running as a Green party candidate in the local elections of 2022, and he also took part in supporting Pekka Haavisto’s presidential campaign.
Ilta-Sanomat noted that Mema received a total of 22 votes in the municipal elections and 18 votes in the regional elections, and he is not an MP — but that hasn’t prevented Russian media from writing about him.
The chair of the Green party in Nurmijärvi, Leni Niinimäki, told IS that Mema did not hold pro-Russian sentiments when he was in the Greens.
A local paper reported in the spring of 2024 that Mema had left the Greens over disappointment about the party’s stance on Israel.
Mema received media attention in Finland after trying to interrupt a speech by European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen at an outdoor event in downtown Helsinki. Police intervened with Mema’s protest however, the paper wrote, adding that the man later said he had been at the event by chance.
Mema was later handed a fine of 110 euros for the disruption, prompting Russian media to allege there was no freedom of speech in Finland, and point out how Finnish courts treat those expressing dissenting opinions.
Mema has, the paper explained, been pleased with the coverage he has received in Russia.
On the messaging service Telegram, which is popular in Russia, Mema has said that the Russian media has offered him interviews that allowed him to express his opinions freely, “while the Finnish media continues to censor me”, according to the paper.
IS said that Mema has appeared as an expert guest on the Russian propaganda channel RT, which authoritatively described him as a “Finnish politician, former European Parliament candidate”.
Among other things, he has called on Ukraine to stop the attacks on Russian soil and to focus on negotiations, as well as suggesting that Nato should stop supplying weapons to Ukraine.
Finland continues to struggle with low birth rates and an ageing population that threaten to chip away at its social safety net.
In an aim to boost births, the Minister of Social Security, Sanni Grahn-Laasonen, has appointed a two-person team of expert investigators to examine the country’s child benefit system, according to Verkkouutiset.
Citing news group Uutissuomalainen (USU), the news site’s headline read “child benefits may undergo a major change”.
“The purpose is to investigate how to promote the birth rate and the child- and family-friendly nature of society, support the livelihood of families and take better account of different family structures,” Grahn-Laasonen said, according to the outlet.
According to the minister, possible changes to the benefit could involve dividing the child benefit payments between parents, and offering a larger benefit for their first child.
“These could be possible methods. The investigation will enable an assessment of their effects and more detailed proposals,” Grahn-Laasonen told USU, according to Verkkouutiset.
Revelations about the sizable salaries of Finland’s biggest earners on ‘tax day’ also told another story, according to an opinion column by Helsingin Sanomat’s business journalist Juha-Pekka Raeste.
On Wednesday, like it does every autumn, the Tax Administration published tax and income information about Finland’s biggest earners and corporations.
He wrote that the tax information painted a rather “bleak picture” of the distribution of wealth in the country, noting that the top earners had gained their earnings through corporate acquisitions or dividends from family wealth — and that such income is subject to a 34 percent tax rate.
Raeste also pointed out that CEOs of major corporations no longer appear at the top of the tax day list, even though their salaries and bonuses have risen. He said that may be partly due to relatively poor stock market performance of Finnish firms — but also suggested it could be due to sophisticated tax planning.
“In an open society, it is good for citizens to know how wealth growth is distributed and developed – as growing inequality is a serious threat to social peace. However, the publication of income and tax information only provides clues about where and to whom wealth accumulates,” Raeste’s column read.
He said that people who have enough wealth are able to grow, buy and sell assets “without ever having to pay taxes” on their annual appreciation.
Raeste opined that the main problem with publishing people’s income and tax information is that it only reports on domestic income.
“In my opinion, inequality researchers should also focus more on changes in wealth differences, rather than income differences,” he wrote.
