The Rise, Fall, and Future of the European Green Parties

During the 1980s, European media headlines were dominated not only by the fear of nuclear war but also by the nuclear power plant accidents at Three Mile Island and Chernobyl, biodiversity loss, and pollution, which was blamed for causing widespread forest dieback in Poland, Germany, and Finland. In other words, the atmosphere of doomsday was similar to what we experience today with the fear of global warming.

Especially young people were anxious – just as they are today – which provided an opportunity for a new kind of political movement. This gave rise to the political emergence of green movements in Germany, Finland and various other countries, leading to significant support in many nations, where environmental advocates even entered national governments.

However, over time, the consequences of nuclear accidents were found to be far less severe than feared four decades ago, and forests continued to grow. At the same time, European industries reduced their emissions to a fraction of what they had been, and agriculture and forestry became more environmentally friendly.

As a result, the driving force behind the popularity of green movements began to fade, leading them to seek new agendas. These were primarily found in value-liberal thinking, whose conclusions were incorporated into green party programs across Europe. This appeared to make the movements a permanent part of the European political power structure.

Eventually, the year 2015 arrived, along with the large migration wave from developing countries. Green movements supported this, which led to a collapse in less than a decade, as the newcomers proved poorly adaptable to European societies.

Thus, the previously extremely powerful German Green Party practically collapsed this fall in the state elections in eastern Germany. Its support in Thuringia was only 1.1% of the votes. In Saxony, the party's share was even smaller, at 1.0%, and in Brandenburg, it was a dismal 0.8%.

In Finland, the Green Party, which at its peak attracted about one-sixth of Finns, fell out of government after the poorly performing 2023 parliamentary elections, and its support has not recovered from rock-bottom levels. It is reasonable to assume that its support would be even lower without the prominent media coverage of the supposed consequences of climate change.

It remains to be seen whether Europe's green movements will have a return to prominence in the future. In my view, this is not possible without a significant reform, in which the parties would abandon at least the most irrational of their value-liberal theses, such as boundless empathy for poorly integrating immigrants or their support for eco-fascist organizations like Extinction Rebellion.

In this regard, I noted as a positive development that at least one Finnish Green politician has condemned the recent attack by the aforementioned eco-fascist organization against Finnish democracy. However, this doesn't allow them to stand out, as also all other Finnish political movements – even the far left – acted similarly. 

Previous thoughts on the same topic:
The Green Movement of Finland is Lost
The Role of Ukraine Aid in the Elections of Thuringia and Saxony, Germany
Competence of the political left

The Difference Between Left-Wing and Right-Wing Envy

In Finland, a humorous anecdote is occasionally shared, in which the ethnicity of the characters change. One version goes as follows.

When a person from Kainuu sees that his neighbor is becoming wealthy, he becomes envious and immediately starts to think about how to bring the neighbor back to being as poor as he is. However, if someone becomes rich in South Ostrobothnia, the neighbor also becomes envious but instead starts feverishly thinking about how he could achieve the same success.

The anecdote is said to illustrate well the cultural differences between the populations of these two Finnish regions. The same story is also often told with the Kainuu resident replaced by a Finn and the Southern Ostrobothnian by an American. In this version, the story is said to depict the cultural differences between the inhabitants of the two countries.

In reality, the story best illustrates the difference between the political right and left. A socialist always aims to equalize income differences, so they naturally start thinking about how to tax the income and wealth of the rich as effectively as possible. In contrast, an economic liberal sees successful people as role models, whose achievements he should aspire to emulate.

This applies both to economically poor Kainuu and to the stronghold of Finland's political right in Southern Ostrobothnia. And it applies just as well to largely social-democratic Finland as to the United States, which thrives on market economy principles.

Previous thoughts on the same topic:
Freudian slip, 9-year-old girl and cultural appropriation
Traditional beliefs turned out to be wisdom
Current status of mankind and its culture

History of Finland XVI: Through rise and fall to a new kind of future

This is the sixteenth - and last - part of a blog post series where I go through the most significant periods of Finnish history. In the fifteenth post, I described how Finland managed to navigate towards the Western world after World War II, under the shadow of the so-called Paasikivi-Kekkonen line of Finlandization policy. At the same time, the education level of the youth increased significantly, but it also gave rise to an extreme leftist student movement, which lost its momentum due to the rise in living standards and emigration.

In the next phase, 1980s Finland headed towards an unprecedented economic boom. The driving force behind it was the liberalization of monetary policy, which allowed banks to trade foreign currencies and grant foreign currency loans to companies that did not have income billed in foreign currencies. However, the Finnish mark was still politically regulated, meaning its value was not left to the market forces to decide.

This contradiction laid the groundwork for the exceptional depth of the 1990s recession in Finland. As a result of the liberalization of foreign currency loans, money flooded into the markets, mainly directed towards the domestic market. At the same time, the policy of strong mark choked export companies, and expectations of a politically-forbidden devaluation raised domestic interest rates.

Therefore, the Finnish mark was pegged to the euro's predecessor, the ECU, at an excessively high rate. Eventually, the entire structure collapsed, many banks went bankrupt, and particularly domestic market companies collapsed under their excessively expensive foreign currency loans after forced devaluation, the state debt exploded, the competitiveness of export companies decreased, unemployment rates skyrocketed, and indebted people lost their future by going bankrupt.

As a result of all this, the mark was eventually allowed to float, which led to a rapid improvement in the competitiveness of export companies. As a result, the Finnish economy became dominated by large companies and subcontractors of extremely successful Nokia. At the same time, Finnish large companies began to internationalize rapidly.

The depth of the recession was also influenced by the collapse of the Soviet Union at the same time, which led to the collapse of trade with the East. As a result, Finnish politicians missed the opportunity to join the Western military alliance, NATO, like the former members of the Warsaw Pact and the Baltic states that had broken away from the Soviet Union, because it would have confirmed the suspicions of Finland's decades-long Finlandization. However, Finland did join the European Union in 1995, even though it was considered a completely unrealistic goal in 1991.

After the Great Depression, the Finnish economy became more neoliberal, as evidenced by the blurring of the relationship between employers and employees through option arrangements linked to company profits. This weakened the relative position of wage earners, and high unemployment did not allow for active action by workers to eliminate it.

This concludes the series of articles based mostly on Professor Heikki Ylikangas's work, where the destruction of Nokia, Finland's defense policy orientation toward the West, and the events that followed were left unaddressed. However, I wish to make few comments related to them.

* * *

One of the most significant measures during the recession was investing in Finnish education. This led to unprecedented expertise in the country, which enabled Nokia mobile phones to rise to a unique position in Finnish economic history. At its best, it was the world's clear market leader in its field, with about 40 percent market share and an even greater share of the profits, but it made two disastrous mistakes.

Firstly, Nokia lost its innovativeness, probably as a result of flawed personnel policies. This was caused by the company's product development based on internal competition, which resulted in an unhealthy competition within the company that directed people's attention to thwarting the product development of competing groups.

Secondly, the company's almost dominant position in the market led to maximizing profits by minimizing costs. As a result, Nokia's products were manufactured in low-wage countries, from which they eventually recruited product development labor without realizing that the difference in living standards between developed and developing countries is also based on factual reasons.

With Nokia's downfall, the flagship of Finnish economy was lost, and large corporations based on "green gold" (i.e. forestry) returned to be the backbone of the economy. However, Nokia's skilled workforce did not disappear, but rather dispersed to benefit multiple Finnish companies.

At the same time, Finland has lost some of its independence to Brussels through the EU integration process, and has had to finance less productive countries in times of crisis. On the other hand, the development of information technology has led to a decline in paper consumption, which has revitalized the product development of the forest industry companies.

At this point, the harsh truth is that the Finnish economy has not yet regained the international position it had during Nokia's heyday. Moreover, the EU's restrictions on the use of forests for economic purposes may not be conducive to its future, if implemented.

In terms of foreign policy, Russia's attack on Ukraine exposed the hollowness of neutrality policy, and Finland quickly became part of the Western defense alliance NATO. This decision will ensure the country's military security well into the future, but may also lead to more frequent entanglements in international conflicts and damage relations with its large eastern neighbor.

Perhaps the biggest change in Finnish society, however, has occurred as a result of the international migration wave from developing countries to western countries. As a result of this and the declining birth rate of the native population, the quality of Finland's population base will change significantly from what it was before - and not all of the consequences of this fundamental change can be anticipated at this point. In any case, it is already clear that a poorly integratable population group has emerged in the country, which, growing faster than the native population, will change the basic structure of Finnish society as a whole.

Finally, in recent years, Finland has had a left-wing government, during which the state budget has been patched with debt to create permanent fixed expenses. As a result, Finland's public finances appear to be aligning with Southern European weak and indebted countries in the coming years, rather than the traditional Nordic benchmark. At the same time, the population has become increasingly divided between political right and left, so the near-future prospects for the country's economy seem quite challenging at this moment.

Throughout their history, however, Finns have demonstrated significant resilience in being able to set aside their internal disagreements and work together in a way that has allowed them to address and resolve issues that have arisen. For that reason, the future of Finland is likely brighter than one could deduce from the current situation.

The original blog post in Finnish:
Nousun ja tuhon kautta uudenlaiseen tulevaisuuteen

All the blog posts in this series:
History of Finland I: How did Finland become culturally part of the West?
History of Finland II: From a hinterland of the Union into a modern state
History of Finland III: The legal and economic weakening of the position of the people
History of Finland IV: The bleakest time in Finnish history
History of Finland V: The pursuit of economic profit saved the country
History of Finland VI: Age of freedom and utility
History of Finland VII: The dictator of the era of Enlightenment promoted capitalist economy
History of Finland VIII: Joining of Finland to Russia led to an increase in crime
History of Finland IX: Enlightended dictator initiated economic growth
History of Finland X: The birth of Finnish identity
History of Finland XI: Finnish democracy and gender equality for women
History of Finland XII: Bloody civil war
History of Finland XIII: The far-right's rebellion
History of Finland XIV: The end of the first Finnish Republic
History of Finland XV: Paasikivi-Kekkonen doctrine
History of Finland XVI: Through rise and fall to a new kind of future

History of Finland VI: Age of freedom and utility

This is the sixth part of a blog series where I go through the significant stages of Finland's history. In the fifth post, I described how the country transitioned from the rule of the highest nobility to a pre-capitalist society governed by the clerical nobility, where the living conditions of ordinary people also began to gradually improve.

Professor Heikki Ylikangas considers the above-mentioned turning point as the most significant in Finnish history. Equally important, following closely after that, is the subject of this post - the mid-18th century.

At that time - amidst the political strife between the "Caps" and "Hats" factions vying for leadership positions - a number of extremely significant decrees were issued that allowed the division of farms into several parts. Prior to this, it was not possible because the state apparatus feared that the farms would become unable to pay taxes as a result.

Similarly, the establishment of tenant farms or rental farms was permitted for peasants: this right had previously only applied to noble and cavalry estates. And as the icing on the cake, the redistribution of land was decided, meaning that each farm's land was located in larger blocks rather than the narrow strips previously required for communal planting and harvesting. This enabled peasants to develop their own land independently of others.

However, initially the peasants were not at all eager to seize the opportunity. The reason was the common forests, which they did not want to divide among the founders of the new farms but rather keep as a resource for profitable tar production. The situation changed only when the crown announced that the state would no longer interfere in the division of land, even forests, and that it would be left to the responsibility of independent landowners after the land reform.

The fourth reform was population registration, which was needed for drafting soldiers into the army, as many families had previously cheated the authorities, for example by giving multiple sons the same name to avoid being drafted. Especially in the 1600s, this had practically meant a death sentence, not so much because of battles but due to diseases that heavily taxed military units.

However, dividing farms was only allowed if the applicant intended to get married. In other words, the ultimate motive behind the reforms was that the Swedish state wanted to increase its population because there was a chronic shortage of labor in the country - in ironworks, manufactories, and manors. Perhaps increasing the economic opportunities of peasants would help to increase the labor force?

As a result of this expanded private ownership, people became more interested in economic entrepreneurship and profit-seeking. In other words, in the mid-1700s, Sweden and thus Finland entered the age of utility.

Also the university system participated in promoting economic prosperity, as in 1747 the position of professor of poetry at the University of Turku was changed to a professorship in economics - the same fate befell the legal department at Uppsala. One of the inventors of economic liberalism, Antti Chydenius, graduated from the Turku Academy, presenting his theories a decade before Adam Smith wrote similar ideas that would be recorded in the world's economic history.

At the same time, the judicial system began to change and the pressure to lighten punishments increased. Municipal power began to be transferred back to parish meetings from the crown bureaucracy. Even the church began to view different revival movements more favorably.

Thus, the societal trend that began in the 1500s towards growing aristocratic power and an extremely unequal society had irreversibly turned towards raising the standard of living for the entire population and democracy. And through this, the economic foundation was gradually laid that would eventually allow for the creation of the modern Nordic welfare state, although this development was not direct or straightforward.

The original blog post in Finnish: Hyödyn aika

All the blog posts in this series:
History of Finland I: How did Finland become culturally part of the West?
History of Finland II: From a hinterland of the Union into a modern state
History of Finland III: The legal and economic weakening of the position of the people
History of Finland IV: The bleakest time in Finnish history
History of Finland V: The pursuit of economic profit saved the country
History of Finland VI: Age of freedom and utility
History of Finland VII: The dictator of the era of Enlightenment promoted capitalist economy
History of Finland VIII: Joining of Finland to Russia led to an increase in crime
History of Finland IX: Enlightended dictator initiated economic growth
History of Finland X: The birth of Finnish identity
History of Finland XI: Finnish democracy and gender equality for women
History of Finland XII: Bloody civil war
History of Finland XIII: The far-right's rebellion
History of Finland XIV: The end of the first Finnish Republic
History of Finland XV: Paasikivi-Kekkonen doctrine
History of Finland XVI: Through rise and fall to a new kind of future

Estonias voted for economic liberalism

In Finland, parliamentary elections will be held in less than a month. "Our little brother" Estonia, on the other hand, was quicker and held its own elections last weekend.

The results provided an interesting point of comparison for us Finns. The largest party for the upcoming term was in fact the current Prime Minister's Reform Party, which will now hold 37 seats in the 101-seat parliament.

The position of the second-largest party went to the EKRE party, which received 17 seats. And the third place was achieved by the local Center Party with 16 members of parliament, following a huge loss of 10 seats. 

Thus, the three largest parties hold a total of 70 seats, and will dominate the politics of our southern neighbor in the future together with a party called Estonia 200, which achieved 14 seats. In addition, members of parliament were elected from the Social Democrats (9 seats) and the Isamaa Party (8 seats).

Since Estonian parties may not be familiar to everyone, it should be noted briefly here that the Reform Party represents market liberal center-right, EKRE is a national conservative right-wing party, and the Center Party is a center-left social liberal populist party.

Estonia 200 is an economic and social liberal party, and the Social Democrats, as their name suggests, are a moderate left-wing party. Meanwhile, the Isamaa Party is a center-right party that led the country after Estonia's second independence.

As my respected reader may have already noticed, Estonian politics are completely different from Finnish or other Western European politics. The country's far-left did not receive a single seat in parliament, nor did the Environmental Party. 

Instead, economic liberalism in particular has a very strong position. And it is even possible that the next Government of Estonia will be composed of only Parties with liberal views on economics.

These differences compared to economically stagnant Western Europe are likely due to the fact that Estonians still remember their experiences of totalitarian rule, which ended only a few decades ago. Also, the economic liberal policies of the new era of independence have led to an explosive increase in their standard of living, resulting in the economic prosperity of the country's citizens surpassing that of e.g. Finns even during my lifetime - and there is not willingness to stagnate the positive development of the economy by unnecessary regulations.

Previous thoughts on the same topic:
Elections in Finland enlight journalistic views
Global warming - searching for the guiltiness
Reducing taxes, enhancing export and paying the governmental debt