The changing pattern of Finnish regional policies

Abstract

This paper is intended to serve as a brief review of the history of Finnish regional policy, especially from the viewpoint of the division of the country into regions. We shall also look at the effects that the European Union has had on regional and agricultural policies as they are now being implemented in Finland.

The material to be used for this purpose will consist of the literature on regional policy, both actual research and committee reports, development reports and information documents published by the various organizations responsible for implementing regional policy in the decades in question. Especially in the case of information connected with the recent process of entry into Europe, it has been necessary to gather the material from a wide range of disparate sources, certain magazines and even newspapers. The material was processed largely by the techniques of traditional thematic cartography, the idea being that this research should also provide illustrations of changes in regional policy for use in teaching.

It became apparent early in the 1990's that regional policy in the accustomed sense had reached the end of the road and that a complete overhaul was needed, the driving force for which came from the expectations of an expansion of the European Community in the direction of Northern Europe.

Finland's sixth series of regional development laws, which came into force at the beginning of 1994, depart substantially from the earlier ones, partly in response to the need to bring Finnish regional policy into line with that of the rest of the European Union, inexpectation of a continued process of integration. The main changes can be summed up under five broad headings: 1. adoption of the indicators accepted by the European Union for assessing regional levels of development, 2. use of a larger areal unit, the sub-region, rather than the commune as the basis for such assessments, 3. simplification of the assessment by using a hierarchy of five levels of development instead of nine, 4. a movement away from enterprise-centred regional development measures and towards project-centred programmes, 5. assignment of a significant role in the planning and implementation of regional policy to the regional councils.