Report creation date: 14.10.2008 - 10:24
Countr(y/ies): Finland
Chapter(s): 1,2,21,22,23,24,241,242,243,244,245,246,3,31,32,33,4,41,42,421,422,423,424,425,426,427,428,429,4210,43,5,51,511,512,513,514,515,516,517,518,519,52,53,531,532,533,534,535,536,537,538,539,5310,6,61,62,63,64,7,71,72,73,8,81,811,812,813,82,821,822,83,831,832,84,841,842,9,91,92

Finland/ 1. Historical perspective: cultural policies and instruments

The formation of Finnish national cultural policies from the mid-19th century to the late 20th century can be roughly divided into three stages:

• the period of the Patron State, from the 1860s to the 1960s;
• the arrival of the Welfare State and the articulation of explicit cultural policy objectives from the late 1960s to the 1980s; and
• the move beyond the Welfare State in the late 1990s.

Historically four forces have shaped these developments:

• the civic movements which, despite linguistic and ideological divisions, contributed to the development of Finnish culture;
• the ambitions of the newly formed state to strengthen Finnish cultural identity, by central government policies promoting the arts and supporting artists;
• the commitment of municipalities (the basic units of Finnish local self-government) to provide cultural services for their citizens, to promote their citizen's interest in the arts, and encourage involvement in the amateur arts; and
• the growth of the national culture industries, which, to start with, were ready to foster the vitality of even less profitable genres in cultural production.

The foundations for Finnish national culture were laid and affirmed under the Russian Czarist regime (1809-1917) which, alongside the Senate of the autonomous Finnish Grand Duchy, was the patron of the evolving bilingual (Swedish and Finnish) artistic and cultural life. After independence, the new nation state took over the role of patron and continued to build a national identity and national unity. This identity was based on the cultural heritage stemming from the period of Russian rule and partly from the period of earlier Swedish rule, which had lasted seven centuries. During the first four decades of independence, which saw a civil war and two wars with the Soviet Union, national unity and national identity became even more prioritised objectives of the state and, subsequently, also central principles in national cultural and arts policies. Other objectives, such as the promotion of creativity and enhancing participation and cultural democracy, started to gain ground in the 1960s and became integrated with other economic and social goals when the ideology of the social welfare state was more comprehensively adopted and implemented in the 1970s.

Public support for the arts and culture had expanded even before the advent of the social welfare state. The municipalities had gradually taken over the task of maintaining institutions of adult education and public libraries from the civic associations and the central government started to subsidise them on a regular basis. The role of the state in supporting these institutions was cemented by legislation in the 1920s. The joint financial responsibility of the state and the municipalities became one of the pillars of modern Finnish cultural policy.

The broader financial basis for public support of the arts, cultural institutions and cultural services was confirmed by legislation in the 1960s and 1970s. The system of artists' grants traces its legislative basis to the late 1960s and state support for municipal non-institutional cultural activities was set in legislation at the beginning of the 1980s.

Although some national institutions (especially the National Opera and the National Theatre) maintained their private legal status, the process of "étatisation" of Finnish cultural and art institutions accelerated in the 1970s and continued well into the 1990s. The institutions of higher education in the arts and the National Art Gallery became part of the state budgetary system and the former were granted the status of state universities. In parallel, local museums, theatres and orchestras also came under the budgetary control of the municipalities and, at the end of the 1980s and the beginning of the 1990s, their grants were organised as a subsystem within the new statutory state transfer (subsidy) system to municipalities. In addition to the new Financing Law, this also led to Laws on Museums, Theatres and Orchestras. Only a few professional cultural and arts institutions (including the National Theatre and the National Opera) were left to be financed on an annual discretionary basis.

The above overview suggests that historically the main instruments of Finnish cultural policy have been:

• direct support for the arts, artists and artistic creativity, including extensive systems of cultural and arts education and professional training of artists, which cover basic curricular and state supported extra-curricular music and art education, professional and lower level training in the arts and for cultural occupations in colleges and polytechnics and higher level artistic education in arts universities;
• public ownership and joint financing of cultural and art institutions by the central government and the municipalities, including the ownership and operation of the public broadcasting company (Finnish Broadcasting Company, YLE);
• modest subsidies to the culture industries, especially to the press and cinema, and;
• promotion of international cultural co-operation, in the spirit of cultural diplomacy.

The late 1990s and the first years of the 21st century have seen a gradual alteration in Finnish society and in its commitment to the basic principles of the welfare state. The changes were precipitated by the severe economic recession in 1991-1993. The changes from the mid-1990s onwards have created, within the legal and administrative frameworks of the European Union, a new system of governance with distinct touches of market orientation in the public sector. Although public cultural administration has been rather slow in reacting to the requirements of new public management, many other factors have shaped the conditions of artistic activities, cultural service systems and culture industries. Such factors are e.g. the enlarging of the European Union, new ways of coupling the arts and artists to the networked information society, and the need to enhance the export of art and cultural goods and services.

The changes that have taken place in the late 1990s and at the beginning of the new millennium have somewhat decreased the role of the state and municipalities in the governance of culture and as direct financiers of creativity, cultural services, voluntary organisations and cultural production. At the same time, the role of public authorities in providing capital investment for cultural buildings and facilities and for professional education in the arts and culture has become increasingly prominent. In other words, public authorities invest in infrastructure and highly trained manpower, but expect that cultural and art organisations and institutions finance an increasing share of the current costs. EU policies, especially the programmes financed within the context of the Structural Funds, have linked public cultural policies more closely to urban and regional development and social cohesion policies. It should be added that Finland has observed strictly the criteria of the budgetary discipline of the EU Stability and Growth Pact, which has curtailed public spending, including in the arts and culture (for the effects of this, see chapter 4.1, chapter 4.2 and chapter 6).

Finland/ 2. Competence, decision-making and administration

2.1 Organisational structure (organigram)

The following organigram gives a detailed overview of Finnish cultural policy decision-making and administration. The solid line arrows and vertical overlapping boxes indicate authority relations; the dotted line and horizontal overlapping boxes indicate relations of influence and co-operation. The titles indicate the status and the role of advisory and planning organisations.

On the state level, the chart includes central government administration of education and science to pinpoint interrelated and joint activities with the cultural policy administration. The responsibility for general and professional education in the arts and culture are under the Department for Education and Science Policy, not under the Department for Cultural, Sports and Youth Policy.

Finland/ 2. Competence, decision-making and administration

2.2 Overall description of the system

As in other Nordic countries, the Finnish political system and public administration creates, simultaneously, both a highly decentralised and highly centralised country. This is due to the fact that the local government system is strong and autonomous in principle, because of the constitutional and legislative provisions and income taxation right of the municipalities. On the other hand, with the advent of the social welfare state, the main burden of implementing modern public service systems was shouldered by municipalities; the state set the legislative framework and committed legislatively to compensate a statutory share of expenditure. In the late 1980s and in the 1990s, this system, which had earlier covered public libraries and adult education, was expanded to include museums, theatres, orchestras and basic arts education. As a result of this development, the state is mainly responsible for the arts support systems, national cultural and art institutions, international cultural co-operation and university level cultural and arts education; and it shares with the municipalities the financial responsibility of maintaining the nation-wide system of performing arts institutions and cultural services (among the most important are public libraries).

The municipalities are responsible for regional and local performing arts and cultural service provision, for which they provide two thirds of the funding. They also maintain the infrastructure as well as financing and supporting local cultural and arts activities, and receive central government subsidies for both of these purposes. Thus the state and the municipal sector are formally on an equal footing in relation to cultural policy competence; yet the state has a much stronger hold of the steering wheel. There is no autonomous regional administration, although EU-membership strengthened the role of the regional councils, which actually are federations of municipalities (for the legal basis and the role of the third sector see chapter 5.3).

The final legislative and budgetary powers rest with Parliament; the overall and co-ordinating executive powers of policy initiation, planning and implementation lie with the government (Council of State), and sector policy initiation, planning and implementation powers are the responsibility of ministers and ministries. The counterbalance to these central government powers can be found at the bottom of the graph in the strong system of local (municipal) self-governance. The regional level is administered on the one hand by the regional authorities of central government (province offices, sector district offices, sector development centres), and on the other hand by the co-operative bodies of the municipalities. Of the latter, the regional councils bear the main responsibility for overall co-ordination of physical planning and regional development.

In Parliament, the main work in the final preparation of bills and budget proposals is carried out in parliamentary committees, which play a major role in this process. The Parliamentary Committee of Education and Culture deals with cultural policy issues, but the powerful Committee of Finance checks and proposes the financial limits for all budget allocations. After Finland's accession to the European Union, the Grand Committee became an increasingly important body that monitors the relations between national and Union legislation and policies. For that purpose it hears the ministers before and after the Union Council meetings. This means that the ministers, among them the Minister of Culture, are in a new and more direct manner responsible to Parliament.

After its appointment, a new government is obliged by the constitution to submit its action programme as a formal communication to Parliament for discussion. The programme sets the agenda for the government and it is accompanied by proposals of general and sectoral development programmes and projects. Culture, youth work and sports, which are considered a joint administrative sector, usually receive short development plans in the programme. In recent years, the government's plans and programmes concerning the overall state support for the municipal sector and third sector institutions are more salient for the arts and culture than the specific chapters dedicated to them. Art and culture, and youth work and sports, although supported by the same types of state statutory transfer (subsidy) system as other public services, are, however, segregated from other services by their special source of financing. They are financed prominently from profits of the state lottery, soccer pool and sports betting company (Veikkaus). These profits and their use do not follow the same pattern as the overall financial policy of the central government, because overall economic fluctuations and gambling interests do not often coincide and, also, the state budget proposal for a given year is made before the actual annual amount of profits is known. Although there are strict legislative rules limiting the use of Veikkaus profits to the arts, youth work, sports and scientific research, the Ministry of Finance and the ruling government have often, irrespectively, tried and succeeded in using them as compensatory resources to fill other budget gaps (see also chapter 5.1.3 and chapter 6).

The government does not have any permanent committees or other expert bodies responsible for cultural policy purposes. It can set up special working groups to monitor and prepare decisions in important policy sectors.

On the sector level, the main planning and executive responsibility lies with the Ministry of Education and Culture. In the Ministry, there are two ministers: the Minister of Education and Science and the Minister of Culture, Youth and Sports. The latter presides over the Department for Cultural, Sports and Youth Policy, which is divided into six divisions, i.e. those of Art and Heritage, Media and Culture, Cultural Export, Cultural Legislation and Finance, Sports and Youth Policy.

The Ministry and its departments and divisions focus on strategic planning and govern and guide through information provision and performance contracts. Consequently, actual policy implementation in cultural and arts administration has been increasingly delegated to the arm's length bodies, special agencies and quasi-governmental organisations. In cultural policy implementation the following organisations are of prime importance:

• the system of arts councils (Arts Council of Finland and its specific art form councils for cinema, literature, visual arts, theatre, design, architecture, photography, music and dance), which is responsible for implementing arts and artists' policies and provides peer group evaluation mechanisms for deciding grants for artists and artist-led projects;
• the National Board of Antiquities which, besides its archaeological functions, is also the main governmental expert body for the whole heritage sector and professional museum activities; and
• the Finnish Film Foundation which allocates public support for film production and distribution.

Furthermore, more specific expert and national policy implementation functions are carried out by bodies such as the National Art Gallery, Finnish Film Archive, Board of Film Classification, the Library for the Visually Impaired, and the Administration of the Fortress of Suomenlinna (a UNESCO World Heritage Site).

International cultural co-operation is managed for the whole ministry by the Secretariat of International Relations. The Department for Cultural, Sports and Youth Policy does not have any units or special plans for intercultural dialogue, partly because the national legislation and administration focuses primarily on the economic and social conditions of minority groups, partly because all educational policies, including education in the arts and culture, come under the jurisdiction of the Ministry's Department of Education and Science (see below and chapter 2.3).

The following other ministries have an important say in the formation and implementation of cultural policies:

• the Ministry of Finance has a guiding and controlling role in respect to economic planning and budget processes of all ministries;
• the Ministry of Trade and Industry provides support for R&D in general and more specifically for the ICT and media and culture industries;
• the Ministry of Transport and Communications has an important planning and implementation role in telecommunications and radio and television activities;
• the Ministry of the Interior is responsible for regional development and has a central role in organising and co-ordinating regional development programmes and related EU-initiated financing; and
• the Ministry of the Interior / Directorate of Immigration is responsible for immigrant and refugee management, from the entry and preliminary hearing of refugees and asylum-seekers and the provision of residence permits to immigrants, to potential naturalisation processes. The Ombudsman for Minorities and several advisory bodies have a central role in the protection of minorities, in anti-discrimination policies and in the integration of refugees and immigrants. Until 2008 they, and the integration policy implementation, have been located at the Ministry of Labour. However, the Ministry of Labour was merged by the new government with the Ministry of Trade and Industry and most immigrant policy administration was relocated within the Ministry of the Interior. The labour market and employment issues of immigration policies were transferred to the new Ministry of Labour and Industry. As for other minority issues, Roma affairs are administered by the Ministry of Social Affairs and Health and the Ministry of Justice monitors the observing of the Sami autonomy legislation and administration.

Finland has an extensive system of local self-government, in which the municipalities have the right of taxation, that is, right to determine the rate of municipal income tax for individuals and enterprises. The state (central government) addresses inequalities in public services and their infrastructural development through financial transfers, at present mainly through the statutory subsidy system. This system is also used for transferring most central government financial support for maintaining more equal regional and local supply of art production and culture services.

Cultural policy decision-making at the municipal level is in the hands of the Municipal Council (elected assembly), the Executive Board (reflecting the party divisions and coalitions in the Council), sector municipal committees and the executive staff, headed by the municipal manager / mayor. Regarding the sector committees and administration, the trend in the 1980s was to integrate all cultural matters (theatre, music, amateur arts, etc.) under one municipal committee for culture. In the 1990s the trend was reversed and cultural matters have been increasingly distributed to trans-sector committees with broader responsibilities (e.g. committees on leisure, tourism, etc.).

There is no autonomous regional administration with elected bodies. The Provincial Offices are extensions of the central government, carrying out the general task of monitoring regional development in general and the development of public service systems in particular. Their number was decreased in 1997 from eleven to five and many specific functions have been transferred to more specialised regional agencies of the central government. At the same time, nineteen regional councils (federations of municipalities) have gained a greater role in regional development and planning. This is partly due to their responsibilities in planning and monitoring programmes financed within the framework of the EU programmes. This development has been counter-balanced by the organising of the regional state administration as regional development centres for such important sectors as the economy and employment, forestry, transportation and the environment.

The Regional Art Councils are an extension of the system of the Arts Council of Finland to the regional level. However, they are under the direct jurisdiction of the Ministry of Education and Culture and they are located administratively in the Provincial Offices. Basically, the arts councils have the same functions at regional level (grants and other support to artistic work, project grants) as the Arts Council of Finland and its art form councils have nationally. At present (2007), there is a legislative bill pending, which, if passed, will transfer regional arts councils within the administrative framework of the "national" system of Arts Councils (Arts Council of Finland).

The basic architecture of the core cultural policy decision-making and administration, as it is depicted in the organigram ( chapter 2.1), has not changed much during the last fifteen years. The various sections of the Department of Cultural, Sports and Youth Policy have been altered and names changed; most recently a new Division for Cultural Export was created. Some delegation of decision-making from the Department to the quangos, especially to the system of arts councils, has also taken place. On the other hand, crucial changes in jurisdiction and decision-making powers have happened in such culturally salient fields as state-municipality relations, guidance and control of the media and the culture industries, and the administration of refugee and immigrant policies.

Finland/ 2. Competence, decision-making and administration

2.3 Inter-ministerial or intergovernmental co-operation

In the Finnish political system, the plenary sessions of the government (Council of State) and its standing committees and working groups have a strong role in controlling and guiding individual ministries and in co-ordinating their work. Inter-sectoral co-ordination has been perceived as an important issue, but few institutional mechanisms to maintain it have been introduced.

Finnish EU-membership has also brought forth a need for inter-ministerial co-ordination. There is a special Committee of Ministers for the co-ordination of EU-affairs and, on the top civil servant level, an Inter-Ministerial Committee of EU-Affairs, with a number of sub-committees, among them a sub-committee for culture and audio-visual affairs.

In any case, the co-ordination of cultural policy planning and decision-making rests with the Ministry of Education and Culture, but important roles are also played by: the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (the co-ordination of "cultural diplomacy"), the Ministry of Transportation and Communications (concerning co-ordination of media, communications and information technologies), the Ministry of Justice (preparing freedom of expression legislation, court processes in immaterial rights issues) and the Ministry of the Interior (immigrant issues). From the cultural policy point of view, the Ministry of Trade and Industry has had a central role in respect to R&D, SMEs and competition issues in the media and culture industries. As the Ministry of Labour will be merged (from 1 January  2008) with the Ministry of Trade and Industry (re-named the Ministry of Labour and Industry), the new "super-ministry" will also have a strong say in such culturally salient areas as public works, construction projects, employment policies (including relations with the ILO) and gender issues. In the same overall administrative reform, the regional development issues were transferred from the Ministry of the Interior to this new "super-ministry", and the financial monitoring and planning power of the other "super-ministry", the Ministry of Finance, was expanded by including, in its jurisdiction, economic, administrative and information technology issues concerning municipal and regional governance.

It is impossible to say how this administrative re-organising will influence the inter-ministerial co-operation in cultural policy issues. Directly, they concerned the cultural policy implementation only in one domain - the administration of copyright policies belonged in the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Education and Culture and it was proposed that they should also be transferred to the new "super-ministry", which already was responsible for industrial rights. As the copyright stakeholders, especially artists' organisations, protested against this transfer, the copyright issues remained within the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Education and Culture (see chapter 4.1 and chapter 5.1.7).

There are no inter-governmental bodies in cultural policy-decision making and administration. As to public cultural services, the Association of the Finnish Regional and Local Authorities is an important intermediary between the central government and the municipalities. To a certain extent the regional arts councils also function as intermediaries between the central government and regions. The financing from the EU Structural Funds has created a whole host of new planning and supervisory organisations, which also co-ordinate regional cultural policies to a certain extent.

The present and the previous government have wished to enhance inter-sectorality in state policy-making and administration. The previous Centre-Socialist government introduced, in its programme ("action plan") for the years 2003-2007, the idea of programme-based management and outlined four inter-sectoral policy programmes for employment, entrepreneurship, the information society and civil society, but did not propose any specific instruments for coordinating their implementation. The present Centre-Conservative-Green government proposed only three such policy programmes:

• labour, entrepreneurship and working life;
• promotion of health; and
• improved welfare for children, young people and families.

Culture was not explicitly included in any of these programmes. The previous government promised, in its programme, to draft and implement a national strategy for the promotion of creativity. This was done, although only a few actions have been implemented. The present government underlines, in its programme, the renovation of the systems of basic public services and the need to reorganise the basic institutional structure of municipal administration and the state subsidy systems. Both carrot and stick are used to merge very small communities; minimum population limits and productivity requirements are set for local and regional public service systems. Because Finnish municipalities are also the main providers of cultural services, these new policy guidelines may have, in the longer run, considerable effects on the performing arts, museums and public libraries.

In 2003-2004, a planning process was carried out to draft a policy strategy for the promotion of export of Finnish cultural goods and services. This planning work was co-ordinated by the Ministry of Education and Culture, but the Ministry of Trade and Industry and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs participated on an equal footing and participants and experts came from different administrative sectors and walks of life. The final report "Staying power to Finnish cultural exports!" was published in 2004, and the Ministry of Education and Culture initiated its implementation by establishing in 2005 a special Division of Cultural Exports.

After the recent overall administrative reform the minority, ethnic, refugee and immigration affairs are concentrated in two ministries, the Ministry of Interior and the new "super-ministry", the Ministry of Labour and Industry (see this chapter, third paragraph). There is a sectoral division in these issues also within the Ministry of Education and Culture. The Department of Cultural, Sports and Youth Policy defines its objectives e.g. in the Immigration Policy Outlines, in rather general terms, as "... the cultural needs of minorities will be enhanced by increasing the grants to correspond the escalation of immigration.; and these needs will be taken better into account in the decisions and activities of the main cultural policy support systems and cultural and art institutions". More recently, in the preamble of the 2007 State Budget, the Department promises to enhance equal access and conditions for equal participation especially in respect to ethnic groups and disabled people. In addition to the "traditional" concern with bilingualism and the status of the Sami (see chapter 4.2.2), the policy actions so far have been limited to the distribution of grants (totalling 252 000 euros annually) to immigrant and minority organisations and artists and to projects and programmes carrying out anti-discrimination campaigns.

The other main department of the Ministry, the Department of Education and Science, has had closer links to other ministries, especially to the Ministry of Labour, in promoting equal opportunities of minorities, ethic groups and immigrants. As the Ministry of Labour has been merged with the Ministry of Trade and Industry, it is difficult to say, what will happen to these links in the near future. As to the education policies of the immigrants and minorities, the main responsibility for the research and development activities, experiments and planning of courses and educational material with the Ministry of Education's main educational expert body, the National Board of Education. Yet, the focus of educational policy efforts has not been longer term promotion of multiculturalism but opening up opportunities for immigrants and refugees to become integrated into the Finnish educational system and subsequently also into Finnish labour markets. Immigrants' native tongue is seen important in the initial integration stage and municipalities can provide teaching in immigrants' native languages if they so wish and have resources. It is symptomatic that immigrants are not at all in the quadrennial Education and Research Development Plans of the Ministry of Education and Culture.

Yet, educational policies provide the closest link of the Ministry of Education and Culture to the overall national system of policy-making and administration in the minority, ethnicity and immigration issues. In this system, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs shapes these issues from the point of view of national security and the Ministry of Interior, through its border guards, police authorities, Department of Immigration and the Directorate of Immigration, has the first say in entry / asylum issues, residence permits and naturalisation. After the recent overall re-organisation of the Finnish ministries, most other refugee and anti-discrimination issues are located within the jurisdiction of the Ministry of the Interior.

Two important legal instances, the Ombudsman for Minorities and the National Discrimination Tribunal are also located in the Ministry of Interior. These organisations are, however, independent of the Ministry in their decision-making processes. The former is the main authority in issues concerning the legal protection and the promotion of the status of ethnic minorities and foreigners and in maintaining equality and non-discrimination practices in ethnic relations. The activities of the latter are defined in the Equality Act i.e. preventing and combating ethnic discrimination in working life and service provisions. Another auxiliary organisation, the Board of Ethnic Relations, which plans and co-ordinates activities in all issues concerning refugees, migrants and ethnic relations, is also located in the Ministry of Interior. This Board and the National Discrimination Tribunal have a representation of immigrant groups and traditional national minorities among their members. No doubt these three organisations also co-ordinate the activities of different ministries, but their main purpose is to operate as bodies where experts and different stakeholders seek solutions for practical social, economic and human rights problems. Consequently municipal (city-) administration and voluntary associations have shouldered the responsibilities for the immigrants and minorities in the fields of arts and culture - and also in respect to multiculturalism and intercultural dialogue. For their role, see chapter 4.2.1 and chapter 4.2.3 for cases illustrating Finnish approaches to intercultural dialogue.

Finland/ 2.4 International cultural co-operation

2.4.1 Overview of main structures and trends

According to the law defining the structure and functioning of the Finnish central government (the Council of State / ministries), all the ministries are responsible for international co-operation within their policy domains. However, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs is responsible for international affairs in many areas, which makes it a joint - and even often the main -actor in the international policy domains of other ministries including significant international treaties and commitments to new international responsibilities. The new tasks of the Ministry cover also such inter-ministerial policy areas as international trade and investments, development co-operation and development aid, humanitarian aid, co-operation with neighbouring regions, and Nordic co-operation. Among the tasks of the Ministry are also relations with international media and cultural relations in respect to the Ministry's own activities and initiatives to make Finland better-known internationally. In other words, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs has its say in practically all of the main forms of international cultural co-operation. In the case of the Ministry of Education and Culture, this means first that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs shares with it the responsibility for cultural agreements and bilateral treaties. Secondly, the post-1989 geopolitical changes and the membership in the EU have increased the role of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in transnational regional co-operation with neighbouring countries. It is responsible for co-operation with the Baltic Sea and Barents Sea regions and the activities within the policy initiative and framework of the Northern dimension. On the other hand, although the Ministry of Foreign Affairs finances some of these activities, the substantive issues, like which projects are initiated and financed and how they are managed, are left to other ministries. Finnish experts, international lawyers as well as professional diplomats have often had a significant role in the search for solutions to ethnic conflicts and human rights issues.

Within the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Education and Culture, the management of international cultural co-operation is assigned to a special unit, the Secretariat for International Cultural Relations. Its main function is monitoring, planning and co-ordinating international bilateral and multilateral relations jointly with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The former are based on bilateral cultural agreements, cultural exchange programmes / memorandums of understanding and bilateral funds (with 45 countries); the multilateral relations include ratification of all pertinent international conventions and agreements and Finnish membership in international organisations such as UNESCO, the Council of Europe, ITU and WIPO. Since the 1970s, Finland has been especially active in UNESCO's and the Council of Europe's main programmes and projects. Most recently, Finnish experts have had an important role e.g. in WIPO's efforts in the renovation of the international copyright agreements and in the effecting of UNESCO's new Convention on the Protection and Promotion of the Diversity of Cultural Expressions.

The EU Desk of the Ministry is also located at the Secretariat for International Cultural relations. Most of the budget allocations of the Ministry of Education and Culture for international cultural co-operation are channelled to these bilateral and multilateral activities. The import and export of cultural products and services has, in recent years, become a major policy issue and in 2005 the Ministry established a new division for monitoring, planning and co-ordinating cultural export efforts (Cultural Export Division).

Nordic co-operation has a special position in Finnish international co-operation policies. Finland is represented in the cultural and educational committees, working groups and steering groups responsible to the Nordic Council of Ministers, and participates in the Nordic Cultural Fund (1996), which is administered by the Secretariat of the Nordic Council of Ministers in Copenhagen. Finland has bilateral Cultural Funds with all the other Nordic countries: Iceland (1974), Norway (1979), Sweden (1960) and Denmark (1981). These cultural funds are administered by the Swedish-Finnish Cultural Centre at Hanasaari (Helsinki). The Ministry of Education and Culture allocates funds for Nordic co-operation.

Finnish art and culture is made better known by promotion centres in Finland and by cultural institutions abroad (see chapter 2.4.2).

The membership of the EU and the globalisation processes have decentralised administration and increased the independence of expert bodies, regional organisations and municipalities in international cultural co-operation. Thus, the EU Media Desk is located in the Finnish Film Foundation, the National Board of Antiquities is responsible for international co-operation in the cultural heritage sector, and CIMO, the Centre for International Mobility, is responsible for student exchange programmes and functions as an EU Contact Point for the Culture 2000 programme. The art universities, research centres and the main cultural and art institutions have their own cultural co-operation relations and are well linked to their respective European and wider international networks (European Theatre Convention, European Theatre Union, ITI, IMC, ICOM, ICOMOS, ELIA, ENCATC etc). The municipalities have their own town twinning programmes and the main cities belong to network organisations such as the Union of Baltic Cities and Eurocities. Associations of artists and cultural centres are well linked to European networks (IETM, International PEN, European Jazz Network, TransEurope Halles, etc.).

Finland/ 2.4 International cultural co-operation

2.4.2 Public actors and cultural diplomacy

The main ministries responsible for international cultural co-operation are the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Ministry of Education and Culture. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs controls and guides the overall "diplomacy aspects" of cultural co-operation, the Ministry of Education and Culture and more particularly, its Department of Cultural, Sports and Youth Policy is responsible for the substantive "exchange of the arts and culture"-activities. Cultural and art institutes, institutes of art education and many expert bodies ("quangos" like the Finnish Film Foundation) maintain, in addition to "content co-operation and exchange", professional co-operation in managerial and technological aspects in their fields of work. The relative role of the two ministries and the internal structure and actors in the Ministry of Education and Culture and the domains of its cultural co-operation activities are described in chapter 2.4.1.

The EU desks and contact points are listed in chapter 2.4.1. The promotion centres located in Finland are involved in the presentation of Finnish arts and culture to the rest of the world e.g. the Finnish Literature Information Centre (FILI), the Finnish Music Information Centre (IFIMIC), the Foundation for the Promotion of Finnish Music (LUSES), the Finnish Dance Information Centre, The Finnish Theatre Information Centre and the Design Forum Finland. The promotion work is also carried out by the Finnish Film Foundation and the Promotion Centre for Audiovisual Culture, whose main functions are, however, financing film production and related development of Finnish Cinema and promotion of film and audiovisual culture. Also, the Finnish Fund for Art Exchange (FRAME), in addition to making the visual arts better-known, "exports" Finnish work via exhibitions and co-operation with foreign galleries and art museums.

Finnish embassies and consulates all over the world have, of course, an important role not only in implementing "official cultural diplomacy", but also as nodal points in the information networks of actors in international cultural co-operation. Finland has also a network of sixteen cultural and scientific institutes abroad. Four scientific institutes are located in Rome, Athens, the Middle East and Tokyo; the twelve cultural institutes are situated in St. Petersburg, Tallinn, Berlin, Budapest, Oslo, Stockholm, Copenhagen, Antwerp, Paris, London, Madrid and New York. All these institutes are operated by foundations; although the state supports them. They do not have any joint mandate, but are independent and have varying missions and profiles which alter when the directors and board members of the foundations change. The most common activities are events, lectures, discussions and exhibitions organised in co-operation with local partners (institutes of art, science, education and technology, business and cultural associations). The institutes do not have a common programme, planning or co-ordinating bodies, although the Ministry of Education and Culture as their main financer monitors their activities and results.

The roles of the other ministries with regard to minority, refugee and immigration policies and in the implementation of pertinent international conventions and agreements see chapter 2.2 and chapter 2.3; they are examined in greater detail in chapter 4.2.2, chapter 4.2.3 and chapter 4.2.4.

Finnish municipalities have become increasingly active in establishing and maintaining ties of their own in international cultural co-operation. They have town twinning programmes and the main cities belong to such international organisations and networks as the Union of Baltic Cities and the Eurocities. On the municipal and regional umbrella level, the Finnish Association of the Local and Regional Authorities is a member of the International Union of Local Authorities (IULA), European Section CEMR of the IULA and the Congress of Local and Regional Authorities in Europe (CLRAE). Finnish regional councils participate in the activities of the Association of European regions. All these organisations maintain cultural co-operation programmes and carry out research and development activities in the administration and management of the arts and culture. The Finnish Broadcasting Company is an active member of the EBU.

The EU membership has opened new avenues for international cultural co-operation e.g. through the training and entrepreneurial programmes of the MEDIA programmes and the co-production funding by Eurimages. Before the current new cultural export strategy, the direct public input of the Ministry of Education and Culture in the culture industries have been incidental. The new strategy will be implemented by a network co-ordinated by the Ministry's new Division of Cultural Exports. In this network the public partners will be the national promotion centres, the Finnish Film Institute, the Finnish embassies and cultural institutes abroad, the Finnish system of arts councils, and TEKES, the Finnish Funding Agency for Technology, the R&D centre within the Ministry of Labour and Industry. TEKES has offices of its own in Brussels, Tokyo, Shanghai, Beijing, Silicon Valley and Washington DC.

In the field of professional art education and in other cultural education and training the educational institutes, especially the art universities and the cultural and art programmes of the polytechnics, are the main actors and have the right to plan and implement their own policies for international exchange of students and teachers and other forms of international co-operation. The overall educational policies do not have integrated national programmes for international education; it is provided as special pedagogical or campaign type courses and educational materials.

Direct financing of international cultural cooperation is limited. In 2006, the financing channelled, through the budget of the Ministry of Education and Culture, to international cultural co-operation was 6-7 million euros, half of which was allocated to the Finnish cultural institutes abroad and about 900 000 euros to the exchange programmes and other activities within the framework of bilateral cultural agreements. The joint co-operative cultural programme with the Russian Federation received 180 000 euros. The budget proposal for the year 2008 promises to increase, considerably, the state financing of the arts and culture and an appropriation of some 3.5 million euros is proposed for cultural co-operation in general and for cultural export efforts in particular.

Finland/ 2.4 International cultural co-operation

2.4.3 European / international actors and programmes

Finland has been active in most of the main cultural programmes of UNESCO, the Council of Europe and the EU (see also chapter 2.4.1 and chapter 2.4.2). Of particular importance is the participation in the UNESCO ASPnet (Associated Schools Project Network / international education) activities, the cultural policy monitoring and development programmes of the Council of Europe, and the EU Kolarctic Neighbourhood activities (INTERREG North). In general, much of the international / transborder cultural projects have been financed within the framework of the EU Structural Funds. The Ministry of Education and Culture underlined in its recent strategic plan for the years 2006-2010 the need to allocate funds especially to cohesion-increasing transborder projects in the new 2007-2013 period of Structural Funds.

On 12 June 2006, the Parliament of Finland approved Finland's adherence to the UNESCO Convention on the Protection and Promotion of the Diversity of Cultural Expressions and the President of Finland confirmed this adherence by signing the Law on 29 June 2006. Finland's adherence to the convention was ratified after all the Member States of the European Community and the Community itself had deposited their Instruments of Ratification, Accession or Acceptance to the Director General of UNESCO. So far, there are no decisions that organisation(s) of the Finnish cultural administrative system will take the responsibility for implementing the information and monitoring functions stipulated in Article 9 of the Convention.

Finland/ 2.4 International cultural co-operation

2.4.4 Direct professional co-operation

Professional cultural co-operation has at least four different levels: 1) government-mediated, 2) national associations-mediated 3) cultural and art institutions-mediated, and 4) informal individual networking.

The "indirect" government-mediated, and often also government financed co-operation, is described in chapters 2.4.1 to 2.4.3. The membership of the municipalities to European associations and the links of the main cities to European city networks were also indicated in chapter 2.4.2. Also of interest here is the extensive cross-country project activities carried out by regional councils, municipalities and voluntary associations within the framework of the EU INTERREG-Programmes. For example the Vyborg-centre project was financed within the framework of INTERREG III A, South-East Finland-Russia Programme. The organisation responsible for the project was Karjalanliitto (Karelia Association), which aims at reviving the relations with the part of Finland acceded to the Soviet Union in the Paris Peace Treaty. Together with the City of Vyborg (Finnish: Viipuri), the Karelia Association has established an information, cultural and development centre in Vyborg to serve heritage / history maintenance and cultural tourists from Finland and other EU countries.

All Finnish national cultural and art associations have their own "cultural diplomacy", that is, co-operative relations either bi-laterally with other national associations or international umbrella organisations. Thus, the Finnish library associations (the Finnish Library Association, the Finnish Research Library Association and the Finnish-Swedish Library Association) have close professional co-operation with the library associations in the Nordic Countries and the other countries of the Baltic Sea Region and all are also members of IFLA, the International Library Federation. Another example is the Finnish Arts Council, with similar transnational neighbourhood relations and membership of IFFACA, the International Federation of Arts Councils and Cultural Agencies and Ars Baltica-network. Some further examples are listed in chapter 2.4.1.

All Finnish national cultural and art institutions have well-established transnational relations with corresponding institutions abroad. New relations are continuously generated and institutionalised. One example is the participation of the Finnish National Opera in the CWM, the Creative Ways to Mozart Project. The project involves collaboration between opera houses and youth culture organisations to engage young people creatively with Mozart and his operas. Working with artists, teachers and young people from across the continent, the partner organisations will exchange, compare, brainstorm, document and, above all, produce ways to bring Mozart alive for young people 250 years after his birth. The project has received funding from EU Culture 2000 Programme and it is co-ordinated by RESEO, the European network of education departments in opera houses.

Informal networks of international relations are important for the careers of artists and cultural professionals. They can, however, also be based around "schools", generations or movements, which extent across national borders. One example is the Finnish "Korvat auki"-("Open Ears"-) generation, whose members were students at the Sibelius-Academy and have, since 1977, revived Finnish music and established an extensive international network. Well-known members of this generation are Esa-Pekka Salonen, Kaija Saariaho and Magnus Lindberg.

Finland/ 2.4 International cultural co-operation

2.4.5 Cross-border intercultural dialogue and co-operation

There are no general programmes, strategies or debate forums aimed at enhancing intercultural dialogue. Ethnic cultural relations and the establishment and maintenance of intercultural dialogue have been left, by and large, to cities, educational planners and schools. The Finnish case studies illustrate how Helsinki has enhanced multicultural dialogue. The importance of the EU Structural Funds and INTERREG programmes are mentioned in chapter 2.4.4. The following cases provide further evidence of their importance in developing cross-border intercultural dialogue.

The Afbare project (Arctic Documentary Films at Risk in Barents Region: Surveying, Protecting and Screening, 2002-2006) aimed at promoting cultural cooperation across borders, increasing public awareness, and protecting audiovisual heritage in Europe by surveying, protecting and screening of arctic documentary films at risk in the Barents Sea region. Priority was given to films dealing with arctic indigenous people, arctic nature, society, and explorations. The Afbare project began on 1 July 2002 and was completed by 30 June 2006. It was co-ordinated by the Artic Centre of the University of Lapland and funded by Interreg IIIA, the North Kolarctic Programme, the State Provincial Office of Lapland, the Finnish Cultural Foundation, and Finnish and Russian participating institutions.

The following example demonstrates the efforts to enhance intercultural dialogue in the Calotte region:

The Calotte Academy is a travelling symposium, with a series of sessions and panels to be held in Finland, Norway and Russia. The Academy has been organised annually, since 1991 (except the years of 2000 and 2001), in research and development centres of the North Calotte Region. In 2007, the sessions of the Academy took place in June in Inari, Finland, Svanhovd, Norway and in Murmansk, Russia. The main theme was a "New Northern Dimension". The theme is politically salient and academically interesting because of the recent (November 2006) agreement by the leaders of the EU, Russia, Norway and Iceland to launch a new Northern Dimension policy evident in the new framework document for the Northern Dimension. In addition to the economic and social developmental issues and problems of cross-border co-operation, the sub-themes of the sessions included such ICD-related topics as "Stability and Security", "the State of Human Development in Lapland" and a "New Northern Dimension: Industry, Research and Education". The sessions were co-organised by the Faculty of Social Sciences at the University of Lapland, Thule Institute at the University of Oulu, the Municipality of Inari and The Sami Education Centre in Inari (all in Finland); by the Barents Institute in Kirkenes / Svanhovd Environmental Centre (in Norway) and by the Murmansk Humanities Institute and the Institute of Economic Studies at the Kola Science Centre in Apatity (Russia). They were financed by the North Calotte Council, the Regional Council of Lapland and the Norwegian Barents Secretariat.

Educational measures also feature prominently in programmes aimed at increasing and intensifying the involvement of young people and youth groups in internationalism and intercultural dialogue. Youth organisations are also active in offering opportunities to their members and youth in general to get involved in international activities. Their umbrella organisation "Allianssi" works in co-operation with the Youth Division of the Ministry of Education and Culture to activate young people in general and enhance their international interests in particular. The initiation of the international programme AVARTTI -Youth in Action programme - is a good example. The programme is internationally known as The International Award for Young People. The programme was first launched in Great Britain in 1956 and is now in operation in 122 countries. The international license was obtained by the Youth Division, but the programme is managed by the Avartti Office, operated by Allianssi. The idea of AVARTTI is that young people can select for themselves an activity programme consisting of components from three activity domains: service, skills, sports and expedition, and earn a medal on three levels (bronze, silver and gold). Although most activities are carried out in Finland, the Finnish AVARTTI is a member of the International Award Association and its activity planning and many of its meetings are international.

In addition to Allianssi, there is another NGO, the Service Centre for Development Cooperation KEPA. This centre is a service base for Finnish NGOs interested in development work and global issues and over 250 such organisations work under its umbrella. It acts as a trustee and representative of its member organisations and assists them in enhancing their activities through training and expert advice. In the field of cultural co-operation, it organises annually the "World Village Festival" in Helsinki. The Festival is at the same time a cultural event and a meeting point for different areas of development work.

For more information, see our Intercultural Dialogue section. 

Finland/ 2.4 International cultural co-operation

2.4.6 Other relevant issues

The EU programmes and projects, especially those financed and carried out under the frameworks of the Structural Funds and INTERREG, have substantiated the assumptions that culture is an important factor in development - in overall national development, for equal regional development and development of transnational co-operation -for examples, see chapter 2.4.4 and chapter 2.4.5.

Finland has special international relations to / through "diaspora Finns" and "kinship people". The diaspora Finns live mainly in three geopolitical areas: North America (the USA and Canada), the Russian Federation (Ingria) and Sweden. The "kinship relations" are maintained with people speaking Finno-Ugric languages.

Intercultural ties through the diaspora relations have now a lesser role than they had in the post-World War II era. The Finnish diaspora in the USA and Canada resulted from the mass emigration in the late 19th century and the early 20th century and the individuals and organisations of this diaspora provided important material aid to Finland after the wars. The second mass emigration, due to unemployment, took place in the late 1960s and early 1970s to Sweden. Although a considerable share of these emigrants returned to Finland, the present diaspora of the first and second generation immigrants is estimated to be about 450 000 persons. The third mass migration took place during and after the Finno-Soviet wars as most of the Ingrians, belonging to a historical Finnish minority population living close to St. Petersburg / Leningrad, were first moved directly, or via Germany, to Finland and then after the truce conceded back to the Soviet Union. The Ingrians were given a promise, by the Finnish President in 1990, to be treated as returning migrants to Finland, and after this promise materialised in legislation and practice, some 30 000 Ingrains have moved to Finland.

When the smaller Finnish Diasporas, and Finnish citizens working abroad, are added to second and third generation Finns living in the North-American and Swedish Diasporas, there are close to 1.6 million Diaspora Finns living outside Finland. Their role as international extensions of Finnish culture, and mediators of intercultural dialogue with their country of origin, displays a great diversity. The North American immigrant communities have had the same kinds of cultural links to their country of origin as any other small immigrant settlements in the U.S and Canada. As the flow of emigration has been steadily waning since the 1940s, cultural communication has also decreased in terms of volume, although it is still fairly active. Although the original Finnish minority in Sweden has decreased, they form, together with their descendents, one of main minority groups in Sweden. On the other hand, because of the close geographic location, cultural communication with the Sweden-based immigrants to Finland takes place to a great extent on the individual level of family and kinship relations and holidays.

The maintaining of links with diaspora Finns has been delegated to an umbrella NGO, the Finland Society, which maintains media and other links and organises meetings and events and allocates grants to diaspora associations and diaspora media. In order to enhance the participation of the diaspora Finns in the organisational activities, the Finland Society established, in 1997, a forum for all expatriate Finns. The forum is called the Finnish Expatriate Parliament (FEP), which enables the diaspora Finns and expatriate Finns to "...come together and decide collectively on issues that they deem important to them". The Parliament, which has sub-forums in eight continental regions, meets every two or three years, its Secretariat is the Finland Society and its Speaker the chairman of the Finland Society.

Cultural communication with other major Finno-Ugric people, Estonians and Hungarians, is carried out using the same institutional and organisational channels as in the case of other bilateral international communication. Communication with other "kin people" living in Northern parts of the Russian Federation is carried out on a more ad hoc basis. As an example of the means of maintaining this dialogue, one can mention the Kindred Nation programme funded by the Finnish Ministry of Education and Culture. The "kindred people" of the programme belong to the Uralic language groups in the Russian Federation, and the programme, managed by the M.A. Castren Association, enhances cultural exchanges, supports collaboration in ethnological research, in education, and in museum and library science, and promotes the preservation of cultural traditions.

The NGOs in Finland organise annually - and mostly in summer time - numerous cultural festivals and events. In 2006, the Ministry of Education and Culture and the Finnish Film Foundation provided grants to 161 festivals and events. The three most popular events attracted the following audiences:

• Helsinki Festival Week (247000 visitors);
• Pori Jazz Festival (156000 visitors); and
• Kotka Sea Days (150000 visitors).

For events with a more definite focus on intercultural dialogue, see chapter 2.4.4 and chapter 2.4.5.

The Ministry of Education and Culture / the Division of Arts and Heritage has planned the Finnish contribution for the EU Year of Intercultural Dialogue (2008). The coordinator of the activities will be the National Art Gallery. The activities will be organised around two main themes:

• intercultural dialogue with children and young people: Arts and culture as an intermediary of cultural diversity; sharing views and experiences; and
• civil society dialogue of the many facets of cultural diversity.

The activities around the first theme will include the launching of a series of projects providing children with inspiring creative intercultural activities (painting, singing, writing, learning by doing etc.), in which the children will come into direct contact with other children sharing the same space (e.g. schools, nursery schools, pre-schools, art education centres, cultural centres, sport clubs). Activities involving young people will include e.g. cooperation projects between schools and cultural institutions and other cultural operators. Experiences will be shared and disseminated in schools, in youth and sports organisations, Internet communities, events etc. In cooperation with artists and the media, the young people will be able to participate in developing e.g. an interactive game and take part in intercultural dialogue.

Under the second theme, the activities of the year aim at reaching wider audiences. These activities will include public debates (through various media channels), seminars, articles, nationwide competitions etc. focusing on such strategic problems as those of "Fair Culture". The dialogue in the events will take, as a starting point, the intercultural reality and underline the importance of transparent dialogical processes open to everyone, but its implementation will probably be left to the National Board of Education, schools and voluntary associations.

Finland/ 3. General objectives and principles of cultural policy

3.1 Main elements of the current cultural policy model

The Finnish cultural policy "model" is first and foremost a model of horizontal and vertical decentralisation and arm's length implementation. On the level of the central government, a number of expert bodies and agencies advise the Ministry of Education and Culture and also implement agreed policies. These bodies also have some independent decision making power. The horizontal decentralisation is often corporatist in nature: associations of professional artists and cultural workers play an important role in the formulation and implementation of policies concerning artists, as well as in determining grants and project funding. This model is also reflected in the central role of the representative associations of artists and producers in copyright affairs and in the management of copyright organisations.

Vertical decentralisation revolves around the axis of the central government (the state) and the local self-government (municipalities). The state is responsible for the national art and cultural institutions, but it also promotes wider and more equal access to the arts and culture by providing financing for regional and local cultural institutions. Previously this work was supported by grants-in-aid that were specifically targeted by the Ministry of Education and Culture. Since 1993, these grants-in-aid have been integrated in the overall system of statutory state transfers to municipalities. These automatic transfers, calculated on the basis of preset cost-compensation and equity criteria, now cover public libraries, institutions of adult education, non-institutional municipal cultural activities, basic arts education, museums, theatres and orchestras. Some municipal institutions were also designated to have special regional functions or were considered to have "regional significance" and receive, consequently, additional central government funding. After the 1991-1993 economic recession, the statutory transfer system did not function for a period of ten years, according to its original principles. The central government did not compensate fully, in its transfers, for the rate of inflation and the rise of labour costs; nor was the total funding increased, although the number of subsidised organisations increased. In recent years, the central government has compensated for the financial losses of the previous years and reformed the system to make it more just and equitable. Consequently, the transfers to municipalities and institutions from the 2008 state budget proposal have already amounted to almost 50% of the total appropriations to the arts and culture.

In the case of vertical decentralisation the "third sector" also plays an important role. The role of professional cultural and art organisations as lobbyists was already indicated. Yet, the "third sector" has two other roles. Firstly, the voluntary organisations are important in enhancing cultural participation and amateur arts. Secondly, although dependant on public support the majority of cultural and art institutions (especially museums, theatres, but also some orchestras) are operated as non-public organisations (voluntary associations, foundations, non-profit joint stock companies). The problem at present is how to adjust all these functions to diminishing public support and to the new conditions of the information society and media developments.

The Finnish model has three further unique features, which are, however, at present under pressure to change. The first feature is the reliance on public ownership and public budgets and, especially, on legislation, which has been used to guarantee the stability (statutory status) of public funding for the arts and cultural services. The statutory status implies that the criteria used for funding can only be changed through an act of legislation passed by Parliament. In recent years, general "desetatisation" processes have started to undermine this strict legislative order. The budget allocations are subject to "performance contracts", their effects assessed by criteria set for efficiency and effectiveness, and the overall policies for outsourcing services in central government and municipal administration are also applying to cultural policy implementation.

The second feature has been the central role of special "earmarked funds", that is, the profits from Veikkaus Ltd., the state owned company of lottery, lotto and sports betting, in financing the arts and culture - including sports, youth and science. As an aftermath of the economic recession in the early 1990s these funds, originally planned for discretional use only, were started to be used to finance more regular statutory state subsidies e.g. to public libraries, theatres, orchestras and basic arts education. Consequently, there was less central government money for new projects and initiatives. The reliance of the central government funding of Veikkaus profits also increased and reached in 2001 the highest level, about 70 per cent of the funds allocated in the budget of the Ministry of Education and Culture to the arts and cultural services. The new acts on the lottery and betting, and on the use of the Veikkaus profits, have started to increase the amount of tax-based appropriations and lowered the share of Veikkaus profits down to the level of 44.6% (budget proposal, 2008).

The third unique feature of the Finnish model has been the lack of autonomous regional level governance - neither in general nor in the arts and culture in particular. The Arts Council system was extended, at the very beginning, to the regional level by creating the system of eleven provincial arts councils. The name of the councils was changed to that of regional arts councils and their number was raised to thirteen when the central government provincial office administration was reformed. The regional arts councils have been administered jointly by the Ministry of Education and Culture (policy guidance) and the Provincial Offices of the Ministry of the Interior (organisational management). From 2008, the regional arts councils will be brought under the administrative umbrella of the system of national arts councils (Arts Council of Finland).

Already in the old subsidy system some of the art and cultural institutions financed jointly by the state and the municipalities received the status of regional institutions (regional historical and art museums, regional theatres) and were granted additional subsidies for their regional functions. Within the present financing system the Ministry of Education and Culture can furthermore designate some institutions as regionally significant and allocate them additional funding. These funding arrangements do not actually make the institutions really regional, as to their ownership and management, intellectual resources or programming. On the administrative level the nineteen regional councils (that were originally associations of adjacent municipalities for physical planning) were reorganised for and invigorated by the EU membership and have taken over a variety of regional planning and development functions, some even in the field of culture. Yet they are still associations of municipalities, not independent regional bodies and their role in enhancing cultural development in the regions is still rather marginal.

There was a definite drift in the 1980s and 1990s towards decentralisation and desétatisation in Finnish cultural policy. This was reflected in the reforms of state subsidy system to municipalities and cultural institutions; in the performance contracts and in the introduction of net budgeting within the state budget framework. Under the present stringent financial policies, these policy instruments have also provided effective means to centralised cost control. If we look at the issue of centralisation from the point of view of enhanced local and regional autonomy, a more unambiguous decentralisation trend is linked to the Finnish membership in the EU and the funding of regional and local projects from the Structural Funds. Financing within the framework of the Structural Funds has involved regional councils in cultural policy processes and released cultural energy at the local and regional levels in the form of cultural projects and new initiatives. The external EU programmes (Phare, Tacis), together with the national programme for co-operation with the adjacent transborder regions also created in 1995-1999 a leeway for autonomous regional and local initiatives across the border with adjacent regions and localities, e.g. in Leningrad oblast, in the Baltic Sea countries and in the Barents Sea region. The "Northern Dimension", the EU programme line launched by Finland, has also helped to enhance autonomy of regional and municipal authorities in international cultural co-operation.

The EU funding and the "consensual" management of the regional and local development projects by the Ministry of Interior, other ministries, regional councils and municipalities has created loose co-operation networks also for planning and implementing regional and local cultural policies. The recent re-organisation of state central government has concentrated the administration of regional development planning and policies to the two "super-ministries", the Ministry of Finance and the new Ministry of Labour and Trade.

Finland/ 3. General objectives and principles of cultural policy

3.2 National definition of culture

There is no official national definition of culture in the Finnish cultural policy. However, as regards official cultural statistics, culture is defined both in a wider and a narrower sense.

In the narrower sense, the term "culture" covers first the arts, which means creative and performing arts, the work of individual artists and related branches of the culture industries (fiction publishing, feature film production, classical music recordings, and record industry, broadcasting, video and multimedia production) with sufficiently high level of cultural contents. Secondly this narrower definition covers the main domains of cultural services (public libraries and cultural programmes of adult education institutions) and cultural heritage (historical monuments and buildings, cultural sites, historical and art museums) and international cultural co-operation. General arts education (for children, youth) is usually included, professional arts education is usually excluded for administrative reasons (they belong to the jurisdiction of higher education and science, as do the National Library and scientific and research libraries, historical and archives and related information services).

The wider definition includes all culture industries irrespective of contents, professional education in the arts and culture and all museums, scientific libraries and archives.

It should be noted that the recently developed EUROSTAT frame for cultural statistics is based by and large on that broader conception of culture. This frame is also used in the presentation of the sectoral statistics on Finnish public expenditure on culture found in chapter 6.4. The framework omits crafts, public broadcasting that is financed by licence (audience) fees, advertising and cultural tourism, which also could be included in the wider definition. The even wider definition would include these domains and so-called tax expenditure, the monetary estimates of tax relief to the arts and culture.

There are attempts submit arts and culture under broader categories of creative industries, creative economy or knowledge intensive industries. For instance, the national project drafting a national Creativity Plan does not assign any particular role for the arts in its final report. There have also been studies that have tried to prove that professional artistic activities are in the transformation process of becoming "KIBSes", that is, knowledge-intensive business services.

Finland/ 3. General objectives and principles of cultural policy

3.3 Cultural policy objectives

The affirmation of national identity was originally the main corner stone of the Finnish cultural policy. Promotion of artistic creativity has been the second prime objective of Finnish cultural policy. This has traditionally been reflected in the endeavour of the state to take care of its artists and to improve their economic position through systems of state arts grants and pensions. In recent years, following the international examples, the Finnish government has, however, started to emphasise creativity and innovations and their contribution to economic growth. This is reflected in the 2004 creativity strategy, drafted by three task forces representing a wide spectre of civil servants from different ministries (notably, education and culture, trade and industry, and labour), universities and art schools, artists and representatives of the business sector.

Thirdly, the shared responsibility of the state and the municipalities in providing, financing and maintaining a regionally comprehensive system of cultural services clearly shows an effort to expand participation in cultural life. The adoption of the arm's length approach in art policies and in the use of expertise and the very fact that the municipalities have the prime role in providing these services are an indication of decentralisation - both horizontal and vertical.

Protection of minorities including the Swedish-speaking Finns, the Sami and the Roma can be seen as an aspiration for cultural diversity. The decisions granting the resident aliens (immigrants and refugees) basically the same social, economic and political rights in local politics as Finnish citizens reflect both equality policies and the will to increase cultural diversity. The more abstract principles, promotion of human rights and cultural rights, reflected in the new spirit of the Finnish constitution and the ratification of all relevant international conventions and agreements can be seen as the moral basis of these more practical legal endeavours.

The above list of objectives correspond well to those used as test criteria in the Council of Europe's review programme of national cultural policies. On the other hand, the ideas that the arts and culture should serve economic growth, increase exports and employment and function as a positive factor in regional development and social cohesion have become increasingly popular in Finland. The combining of the traditional objectives with these new economically oriented objectives is reflected in the recent 2015 strategy of the Ministry of Education and Culture where the following strategic "key functions" were listed:

• safeguarding equal access to education and culture;
• promoting intellectual growth and learning;
• enhancing opportunities for sharing and participation;
• providing resources for improving the cultural and economic competitive capacity in Finnish society;
• opening up new channels in order to diversify the Finnish impact in the international community; and
• improving effectiveness in cultural sector.

Another document by the Ministry of Education and Culture ("Review of the Future", July 2006) listed the following set of more concrete objectives and also proposed the annual need for budget increases for their implementation:

Table 1:     Planned annual budget increase, in million euros, 2009-2011

Budget outlay for:	Annual average increase
Participation in the EU-programme of the European cultural city 2011	1.0
Enhancing active participation and welfare through culture	5.0
Expanding the activities of the National Film Archive to cover radio and TV programmes	2.0
Promotion of creative industries and cultural exports	9.0
out of which, from the Ministry's own budget	3.5
Government grants to subsidise municipal cultural services within the statutory support system	6.0
Pilot project for abolishing entrance fees to museums	3.0
National programme for digitalisation of cultural heritage	5.0
Other activities for strengthening national cultural resources	9.0

Source:      Ministry of Education and Culture, "Review of the Future", July 2006.

These increases are proposed irrespective of the expenditure frame (maximum) which the government has set for the same years. The central government budget proposal for the year 2008 indicates that despite the change of the government coalition in 2007 practically all the target areas have already had some priority funding, although to a considerably lesser degree than proposed for the following years.

Cultural identity and diversity have been priority objectives of Finnish cultural policies, although they have been seen traditionally in terms of bilingualism of Finnish culture and the cultural rights of national minorities (see chapter 4.2.2 and chapter 4.2.3 below). The fast growth in the number of immigrants and the issues in refugee policies have broadened the approach to diversity policies, enlivened debates and led to new legislation and projects for the integration of "the new Finns" (immigrants, refugees). In the preamble of the 2007 State Budget Proposal, "taking ethnic relations into account" is defined as a financing priority for the arts and cultural services.

Finland/ 4. Current issues in cultural policy development and debate

4.1 Main cultural policy issues and priorities

In Finland - like everywhere else - new cultural policy issues are partly exogenous, partly endogenous; that is, they may be initiated by more general national or international development objectives or reflect more uniquely policy interests and problems ensuing within different domains of the arts and culture.

The main source of exogenous cultural policy issues and debates are economic policies. Although the economic importance of the arts and culture is generally recognised and even underlined in economic policy documents, negative opinions are often expressed about the subjugation of the arts and culture to economic interests and economic policy-makers are criticised for not taking sufficiently into account the unique nature of artistic creation and cultural production and distribution processes. Especially, the stringent financial policy practices, proctored strictly by the Ministry of Finance, have led to protests by artists and cultural professionals. The most recent debates have had three special foci:

• the intentional evasion, by the budget-makers, to compensate for inflation and to raise the level of statutory subsidies to municipalities and cultural institutions; the continued criticisms have led to a considerable funding increase in the last two central government budgets;
• using the profits from the government lottery, lotto and sports betting, originally designated for the arts, to finance cultural services (especially for public library expenditure), or, more recently, to pay the formal rent of cultural institutions to the State Estate Corporation. The protests have made Parliament stop these budget practices; and
• raising the public funding of film production to the same level as it is in the other Nordic countries. Plans to maintain funding on the present level, in the 2008 state budget, led to a strike (production closure) by Finnish film producers in September; the cultural budget was redrafted after the Parliament started action against the "misuse" of the lottery, lotto and sports betting.

The new policy lines, emphasising the role of art and culture as creative sources for overall development and boosting national exports, were earlier criticised as subjugation to economic interests. However, they are now generally accepted as overall objectives for cultural policy. The recent administrative reform gave rise to an intense debate on whether the copyright issues should remain in the Ministry of Education and Culture or be transferred to the Ministry of Labour and Industry. The protests were effective: the copyright issues were not transferred from the Ministry of Education and Culture to the new Ministry of Labour and Industry.

At the beginning of the century the main endogenous issues debated were the promotion of artistic creativity, the rights and wrongs in the new copyright legislation and the clarification of the role of national and regional arts councils. In the forefront of the more recent endogenous debates, there have been problems concerning the provision of welfare services to the artists: the organisation of the artists' unemployment insurance and pension funding and the artists' right to receive unemployment benefits. So far, few potential solutions have been found and the debates continue. Another issue has been the professional and academic education of artists and other cultural labour force. It has been argued that too many students are recruited by the arts universities and cultural, media and humanities programmes of the professional schools and Polytechnics and this has resulted in under- and unemployment. Consequently the Ministry plans to reduce the number of students practically in all professional and academic programmes of the arts and culture

Finland/ 4.2 Recent policy issues and debates

4.2.1 Cultural minorities, groups and communities

Constitutionally protected and historical minorities in Finland consist of the following categories:

Constitutionally protected minorities and indigenous people (see chapter 5.1.1):

• Swedish-speaking Finns ("second national culture"); 290 000 persons
• The Sámi-people as a conglomerate of cultural communities 7 000 persons

· of this: speakers of the Sámi languages             1 700 persons

Historical minorities:

• Roma people 13 000 persons
• Russians of "old" origin,
  whose families settled in Finland during the Czarist rule 5 000 persons
• Tatars 850 persons
• Jews 1 500 persons

These figures indicate that Finland has been a relatively homogeneous country; especially as Swedish-speaking Finns are not constitutionally considered a minority but a second national culture, parallel to that of the Finnish-speaking population. Constitutional and legislative responses to the claims of the "old" minorities have concentrated, by and large, on two groups: Swedish-speaking Finns and the Sámi. Due to their special historical position, they have a high degree of cultural autonomy with cultural institutions of their own, special linguistic and educational rights and special budget considerations in the state and local government budgets. The Roma people have been the target of special educational, cultural and social welfare measures, while the three other small ethnic minority groups have their own small communities and institutions (associations, churches, kindergartens). Some 23 per cent of Swedish speaking Finns live in the Helsinki Metropolitan Area; the Sámi-people live mainly in Finnish Lapland (although there is also a City-Sámi Association). The "old" Russians, Tatars and Jews are concentrated mainly in the Helsinki Metropolitan Area.

Formation of immigrant communities

From the international comparative perspective, the recent inflow of foreign citizens, immigrants and refugees into Finland started late, in the first half of the 1990s. The acceleration of inflow was due to two factors: firstly to the increase in the number of refugees allowed to enter Finland, especially so-called "quota refugees" from Somalia; and secondly, to the "repatriation" policies which allowed Ingrians of Finnish origin from the former Soviet Union to enter as "returning nationals". The first "official" refugees from Chile and Vietnam were accepted at the request of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees in the 1970s and 1980s; the system of "quota refugees" was adopted in 1988, and the first wave of Somali refugees arrived in Finland in 1992. This was followed by an influx of "quota refugees" from Southeast Europe, Iraq and Turkey, and migrants from Asia, e.g. from China and Thailand. The Ingrians were officially recognised as "returning nationals" by President Maunu Koivisto in 1990, and they contributed to about one-third of the close to 62 000 immigrants entering Finland in the 1990s. This wave was paralleled by a steady escalation of individual immigration from the Russian Federation and Estonia.

The following tables provide information about the immigration flows into Finland.

Table 2:     Foreign citizens in Finland in 1990, 1995-2005

Country of citizen-ship	1990	1995	1996	1997	1998	1999	2000	2001	2002	2003	2004	2005
Russia	.	9 720	11 810	14 316	16 861	18 575	20 552	22 724	24 336	24 998	24 626	24 621
Estonia	.	8 446	9 038	9 689	10 340	10 652	10 839	11 662	12 428	13 397	13 978	15 459
Sweden	6 051	7 014	7 291	7 507	7 756	7 809	7 887	7 999	8 037	8 124	8 209	8 196
Somalia	44	4 044	4 555	5 238	5 371	4 410	4 190	4 355	4 537	4 642	4 689	4 704
Serbia*	75	2 407	2 624	2 755	2 935	3 392	3 575	4 240	4 224	4 243	4 090	3 954
Iraq	107	1 341	1 855	2 435	2 670	2 960	3 102	3 222	3 420	3 485	3 392	3 267
China, PR	312	1 412	1 471	1 610	1 650	1 677	1 668	1 929	2 086	2 372	2 613	2 981
Germany	1 568	1 748	1 836	1 961	2 072	2 162	2 201	2 327	2 461	2 565	2 626	2 792
United Kingdom	1 365	1 865	1 803	1 907	2 058	2 170	2 207	2 352	2 535	2 651	2 655	2 762
Turkey	310	1 335	1 479	1 668	1 737	1 737	1 784	1 981	2 146	2 287	2 359	2 621
Thailand	239	763	864	964	1 084	1 194	1 306	1 540	1 784	2 055	2 289	2 605
Iran	336	1 275	1 397	1 681	1 706	1 868	1 941	2 166	2 363	2 531	2 555	2 562
USA	1 475	1 844	1 833	1 905	2 001	2 063	2 010	2 110	2 146	2 149	2 040	2 086
Afghanistan	.	.	55	60	71	138	386	719	1 061	1 312	1 588	1 833
Vietnam	292	2 084	2 143	2 171	1 965	1 840	1 814	1 778	1 713	1 661	1 538	1 657
India	270	454	485	528	566	647	756	892	1 012	1 169	1 343	1 619
Bosnia / Herze-govina	.	928	1 342	1 420	1 496	1 581	1 627	1 668	1 701	1 694	1 641	1 584
Other	13 811	21 886	21 873	22 785	22 721	22 805	23 229	24 913	25 692	25 668	26 115	28 549
TOTAL	26 255	68 566	73 754	80 600	85 060	87 680	91 074	98 577	103 682	107 003	108 346	113 852

Source:      Statistics Finland, Migration, http://www.stat.fi/til/muutl/index.html
*                 Including former Yugoslavia.

Table 3:     Total Finnish population by home language and the number of foreign citizens in 1996-2005

Year	Total population	Finnish	Swedish	All Sami languages	Other languages	Foreign citizens
1996	5 132 320	4 765 434	294 233	1 712	70 941	73 754
1997	5 147 349	4 773 576	293 691	1 716	78 366	80 600
1998	5 159 645	4 778 604	293 269	1 688	86 085	85 060
1999	5 171 302	4 783 224	292 439	1 690	93 949	87 680
2000	5 181 115	4 778 497	291 657	1 734	99 227	91 074
2001	5 194 901	4 793 199	290 771	1 734	109 197	98 577
2002	5 206 295	4 797 311	290 251	1 720	117 013	103 682
2003	5 219 732	4 803 343	289 868	1 704	124 817	107 003
2004	5 236 611	4 811 945	289 751	1 732	133 183	108 346
2005	5 255 580	4 819 819	289 675	1 752	144 334	113 852

Source:      Statistics Finland. Migration, http://www.stat.fi/til/muutl/index.html

Despite the decentralisation efforts in the case of refugees, some 44 per cent of the foreign population has settled in the Helsinki Metropolitan Area, e.g. some 82 per cent of Somalis have established their homes in the Helsinki Metropolitan Area, while Russians and Estonians are spread more evenly around the country. This makes the Somalis a visible and audible minority in the Helsinki Metropolitan Area, in the sense of community spirit, religion, and habits, while the Russians and Estonians have been characterised as "invisible" and "inaudible" minorities.

In the mid-1990s the human rights stipulations of the constitution were reformed to expand rights covering all persons living in the country and these reforms were enshrined into the new codified constitution of 1999. Promotion of diversity has been reflected mainly in continuous reforms to improve the position of national minorities (the Sami, the Roma). Enhancing the rights of immigrants and refugees has been on the agenda of the government during the last five years, but most progress has been made in measures that help to integrate these groups economically and socially into Finnish society. Control of the refugees' entry into the country however has been made more restrictive and cultural rights of immigrants, though included in the new legislation, have been implemented only by a few direct measures. The Ministry of Education and Culture has in its budget a small appropriation for supporting minority and immigrant cultures, fighting racism, for multi-cultural events and projects and for supporting immigrant artists. As for cultural services, a public multilingual library (books in 60 languages) has been maintained since 1995 as an annex of the Helsinki City Library.

Although direct arts and cultural policy measures for the protection and promotion of "new" minority cultures are few and limited in scope, the responsibility for the minority and immigrant cultures has been shouldered by the educational authorities, municipalities and cultural and art institutions.

Finland/ 4.2 Recent policy issues and debates

4.2.2 Language issues and policies

It is customary to speak about the Swedish-speaking Finns as a minority, although the basic ideology of nation building was that Finland has two parallel Finnish cultures, one based on the Finnish-language and the other on Swedish. The rights of the Swedish-speaking population are guaranteed in the newly (1999) re-codified Finnish Constitution and further enacted by a special Language Act, which, together with some special laws, provides for equality in the official (administrative, court) use of the native language and access to education and public careers. A special issue has been the "compulsory" teaching of Swedish as a second native language in primary and secondary education. The Language Act, as well as the Sami Language Act - providing for the right to use Sami as an official language in the Sami homeland area, were revised in 2003 and enacted in 2004. Sami is the only recognised indigenous culture in Finland.

Besides the Sami, the Constitution gives a special position also to the Roma people and to the users of sign language, and guarantees all three groups the right "...to maintain and develop a  language and culture of their own". The rights of these minority groups are also enshrined by the international conventions, especially by the European Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities and the European Charter for the Protection of Regional or Minority Languages.

Finland/ 4.3 Recent policy issues and debates

4.2.3 Intercultural dialogue: actors, strategies, programmes

The demographic, legal and administrative conditions for intra-country intercultural dialogue are outlined in chapter 3.3, chapter 4.2.1, chapter 5.1.1, and chapter 5.1.9.

Among the traditional minorities, the Swedish-speaking Finns and the Sami have a special position which is reflected in their interaction and dialogue with the dominant Finnish-speaking culture. This dialogue concerns mainly the maintenance and fortification of their constitutional positions, which, in the case of the Swedish-speaking population, is the "second national culture" and, in the case of the Sami, their position as a constitutionally recognised indigenous people. These positions have been, every now and then, challenged by some groups and political factions of the Finnish speaking population, which have considered the minority rights unjust from the point of view of the Finnish speaking population. This type of intercultural dialogue is reflected in two recent issues.

In the case of the Swedish speaking culture, the main issue for some has been the special position of the Swedish language in the school curricula. As a second native language, Swedish has been a compulsory language both in primary education and at second level. This has been seen by some groups as a limitation to free choice in language learning and as a hindrance for broadening the language skills of the Finns. The long-drawn debate led finally to new legislation in 2004, which removed Swedish from the position of a compulsory subject in the high school final matriculation exam.

The issue concerning the position of the Sami people had broader ramifications. The logging in the old forests of reindeer herding regions has been seen by the reindeer herders to endanger the growth of both ground and tree-growing lichen, which are the winter fodder of reindeers. The three additional - and in some sense actually main - parties have been the environmental NGOs (WWF Finland and FANC, the Finnish Association for Nature Conservation) and the forest company Metsähallitus, and the main wood processing Finnish enterprises. The main respondent in the debate was Metsähallitus, which has legislative right to governing the use - i.e. logging - of the state-owned forests (12 million hectares of state land and water areas) and planning of their protection. The conflict led to a field confrontation in Lapland where Green Peace was the organizer of active resistance to logging. The conflict was solved to the - at least temporary - satisfaction of the parties involved. It, however, revived the concerns relating to safeguarding the material basis of the Sami livelihood and culture and also threw light on another even bigger issue, the Sami land-ownership, which is still without final legislative solution in Finland.

From among other traditional minorities the monitoring and protection of their rights the Roma and Finnish sign language users have been carried out mainly within the framework of international human rights agreements and conventions. As in most of the host countries in Europe, improving the educational and labour market position and the social equality of the Roma people has been an "eternal issue", although the intensity of discrimination has been waning. The European Roma and Travellers Forum was established by the Council of Europe with the support of the Finnish President, Mrs. Tarja Halonen.

Intercultural dialogue concerning "newcomers'", their cultural rights and initiatives to support their projects and cultural activities has been carried out within the context of local and regional authorities, NGOs and cultural institutions and the media, but recently also national cultural institutions have initiated interesting programmes and projects to increase intercultural dialogue. In 2005, The Finnish National Art Gallery nominated a cultural diversity coordinator for the museum for a period of two years to improve intercultural dialogue between the Finns and immigrants living in Finland.

The Finnish updating of the compendium content contains four cases of good practice by a municipality (City of Helsinki / Caisa), by the Finnish Broadcasting Company (the programme "Bazaar") and by two private initiatives (Cassandra; EU-MAN). Central government educational and anti-discrimination efforts are presented in chapter 2.4.2 and chapter 8.3.2. Details of the formation of minority policies and organisations for inter-cultural dialogue in the city of Helsinki are included below; the same model has been followed by some other cities.

The City of Helsinki started to plan systematically its immigrant policy in 1991 (like many other big cities such as Tampere, Turku etc); and, even to start with, this was not carried out only in order to solve potential social, political and economic problems, but also as part and parcel of urban development policies. This approach was expressed for the first time in 1991 in the report of the committee that made proposals for the basis of the city's future immigration policy:

"The objective of the Helsinki City immigrant policy is to enable the transformation of the city into an international multicultural capital, where foreigners have equal rights to municipal services and can maintain their own language and culture, while having an opportunity to become integrated in the city life."

The report led first to the establishment of an immigrant service unit and a council for immigration affairs. The latter drafted an immigration policy programme that was enacted in 1995. The programme listed ten strategic policy areas that, by and large, followed the outlines of the national integration legislation. They, however, also emphasised the need to increase immigrants' social participation and multiculturalism. Establishing meeting-points, and forums where different ethnic groups and Helsinki denizens could meet was proposed as the main means to these ends.

Enhanced interaction through meeting points was to be organised on two levels: on the level of city districts and the city as a whole. On the district level, the responsibility to activate immigrants was to be shouldered jointly by the denizens' district associations and city officials. On the city level, establishment of a new international "foyer" was proposed.

The latter proposal led to the decision to establish Caisa, which started its activities in March 1996. It objectives, to start with, were defined as:

• to enhance encounters-between the immigrants and Helsinki denizens;
• to provide services that facilitate immigrants ability to face problems of everyday life; and
• to promote the evolving of a multicultural city according to objectives of the City's immigration policy programme.

Or, more specifically: "Cultural activities of ethic groups will be supported so that they have an opportunity to maintain their ethnic identity" and "New items will be included in the supply of cultural services and services will be brought closer to immigrants, to schools and joint meeting places, so as to provide foreigners with a channel to bring forth the artistic expressions of their own."

Recently, an extensive evaluation of Caisa's activities was carried out and published. It found that Caisa had managed well, by and large, in achieving its main goals:

"It appeared that Caisa has successfully reached both the immigrant groups and representatives of the dominant culture and those contacts had taken place in practice. The centre has been a meeting place and a channel for making other cultures better known to the majority. .... It has managed to create a more favourable public image of immigrants, and thereby possibly contributed to reducing prejudices and discrimination." But, on the other hand: "Our study also showed that immigrants' associations, although they play an important role for the immigrants' integration, cannot manage without the support of the city. They do not have the economic resources needed for activities targeted to the (Finnish) majority, e.g. for cultural gatherings.... Their resources are not always even enough to organise the activities needed for keeping their associations together."

For more information, see:
Database of Good Practice on Intercultural Dialogue and our Intercultural Dialogue section.

For more information on the government's National Strategy for the European Year of Intercultural Dialogue please see: http://ec.europa.eu/culture/eac/dialogue/strategies_en.html

Finland/ 4.3 Recent policy issues and debates

4.2.4 Social cohesion and cultural policies

Although the flows of immigrants and refugees accelerated in the 1990s, Finland is culturally and linguistically a very homogeneous country. The share of the Finnish- and Swedish-speaking Finns is still somewhat above 97% and the share of foreign language speakers thus below three per cent. Even the share of Swedish-speakers is only around 5.5-5.7%, and the number of people belonging to other traditional minorities is small: the total number of the speakers of Sami languages, Roma people, Tatars and Jews add up to some 22 000-24 000 people. A similar homogeneity prevails as to the religion: 84.6% of Finns belong to the Lutheran State church, 13.1% have no religious affiliation, and the share of the "second" state sponsored church, which is Greek-Orthodox, is 1.2% and the other religious communities share the remaining 1.1%.

As the descriptions in the previous chapter bear witness to, the dispute and conflicts concerning minorities have been and still are engendered by the defence of the material interests or legal position and related special rights of minority groups. Certainly there have been and still appear cases of racial and religious discrimination and violence, but they have been and still are local individual outburst, not broader cleavages in social cohesion of the nation. The high level of national cohesion can also be explained by historical facts, especially by the joint effort of all linguistic and cultural groups to defend the country in the Finno-Russian wars of 1939-40 and 1941-44. The civil society, which was splintered into networks of leftist and bourgeois associations and federations e.g. in labour union activities, sports, consumers' co-operatives, adult education and some sectors of the arts and culture, was unified stepwise in the 1980s and 1990s - or, more precisely, the political and ideological splits were nullified by the forces of market economy.

Under the surface of apparent cohesion there are social and economic trends which may in the long run generate tensions and raise new difficult challenges to central government and local and regional decision makers, including those of cultural policy and administration.

One such trend is uneven regional development, or, in other terms, the accumulation of employment opportunities and population to the Helsinki Metropolitan region and to a number of major cities. This development, together with stringent central government financial policies which have stagnated public support for the arts an culture - and especially to cultural institutions - has started to shape both the audience composition and the content provision by the artists and cultural and art institutions. The result might be, in the longer run, even more rapid concentration of cultural and art supply to Helsinki Metropolitan area and other big city centres, increased competition in these centres and subsequent division of labour and content differentiation in art provision and cultural services in these areas. This, in turn might have in the longer run negative effects on overall national cohesion.

The second trend is the increasing inequality in terms of income distribution and relative poverty. Since the recession of 1991-1993, subsequent boosts in rapid economic growth, and the "marketisation" of the public sector, have increased income inequality and relative poverty (number of people having a net income of less than 60% of the national medium). These trends, and the subsequent inequality in opportunities to consume and enjoy the arts and culture by everyone in every part of the country, are probably the main threats to cohesion promoted by the arts and culture at present.

The third trend concerns the role of the EU in regional development and development of national arts and culture. There is a paradox that most industrial and occupational sectors - including the arts and culture - have gained more than what they have lost during the EU membership and its trans-national policies; yet the citizens' attitude to the EU as a whole has become increasingly negative. Within one year's period 2005-2006 the share of people with a negative attitude to Finnish membership has increased from 23% to 31% and the share of positively oriented decreased from 42% to 33%. The division here is scarcely a problem from the point of view of Finnish national cohesion. The intensity of attitudes is neither high enough that the EU issue, if couched in general terms, would cause national cleavages. The negative attitudes, however, reflect problems in communication policies of the central government in respect to more specific EU policies. Politicians inform citizens about the "games" played in Brussels, not about outcomes and consequences of specific policies. Failures in "games" are reported by the media, while positive outcome are seldom reported. This happens also to cohesion policy programmes of the EU, which forebodes better future for national cohesion of the member countries than for the cohesion of the EU itself.

These three assessments are conjectures, but they identify potential basic logics of the interplay between economic factors, national and EU policies and national regional policies. As an outcome of this interplay emerge cohesion problems, which should be paid attention to in the financing of arts and in organising the management of cultural and art institutions. The Finnish cultural policy programmes do not deal directly with these trends of development.

Finland/ 4.2 Recent policy issues and debates

4.2.5 Media pluralism and content diversity

Although the media sector (and also the telecommunications sector) has been liberalised in Finland in the same manner as in the other EU member states, the public broadcasting company (YLE, the Finnish Broadcasting Company, FBC) has maintained its position as the bastion of "public service". The organisational reforms both of the television channels and radio channels have aimed at better division of labour that also allows the production and diffusion of high quality cultural programmes. Organisational reforms have also been made to accommodate digital radio programmes and the imminent switch to digital TV broadcasts. These reforms will favour more efficient use of the old stock of artistic and cultural assets of the FBC and the better provision of new cultural programmes. The FBC has recently opened up an extensive part of its "programme heritage" to audiences via the Internet; and it has been diversifying its cultural and art programmes with the channels made possible by digitalisation. The adding of "cultural news" to the standard programmes of YLE's television and radio programmes was the first step in this development.

Otherwise, the concentration of media seems to continue. SanomaWSOY, by far the largest Finnish media company, has increased its turnover through international acquisition to 2.7 billion euros in 2006; the Swedish media giant Bonnier has in recent years increased its ownership in the Finnish media (acquisition of the commercial channel MTV3) and in book publishing (acquisition of one of the major Finnish publishing houses). The counterbalance in the public sector is still the Finnish Broadcasting Company, but its turnover in 2006 was only 384 million euros. The second largest media company Alma Media has a turnover of about 300 million euros after having sold its television activities to Swedish companies Bonnier and Proventus. There are also some further signs of concentration taking place in the wholesale and retail of books and in cinema and video distribution.

These concentration processes have been monitored by the Finnish competition authorities, of which the executive authority, the Finnish Competition Authority, operates under the Ministry of Trade and Industry. Its objective is to protect sound and effective economic competition and to increase economic efficiency by promoting competition and abolishing competition restraints. The Market Court is the higher legal instant in competition cases. The Competition Authority has investigated several merges and potential monopoly / trust cases in different sectors of the media and culture industries.

It is difficult to assess how media concentration will affect the quality and diversity of cultural contents. It is assumed that media concentration, commercialisation and homogenisation of content supply go hand in hand. Afternoon papers (or more generally the "yellow press") and commercial radio have been identified in Finland as examples of this development. On the other hand, e.g. in book production, concentration and the birth of new vigorous small publishing companies have gone hand-in-hand.

Some studies have opened up a new perspective in the issue of media pluralism and content diversity. They have pointed out that in the case of publicly supported media the diminishing public support leads to "mainstreaming" of production, that is, maintaining good standard quality, but at the same time optimising audience appeal without risk taking. This trend has been observed in theatre repertoires, but it has been argued that it also prevails in feature film production.

If the share of domestic products in the media and culture industries is considered as a measure of content diversity, Finland can display a reasonably good account, as the following figures demonstrate:

Table 4:     Share of domestic products in different sectors of culture industries, in %, 2002/2003

Field	Share in %
Book publishing (share of domestic titles of all published)	83
Television (share of domestic titles of total programmed broadcasts)	55
Phonograms (share of domestic phonograms of total phonogram sales)	54
Cinema (share of domestic film audiences of total cinema audiences)	22
Video (share of total sales / rentals)	14 / 5

Source:      Statistics Finland, Kulttuuritilastot / Cultural Statistics 2005.

Finland/ 4.2 Recent policy issues and debates

4.2.6 Culture industries: policies and programmes

The "culture industries" has not been a central concept in Finnish cultural policies, which have, by and large, focused on arts, heritage issues, cultural services, cultural participation and consumption of culture. This is reflected in the financing figures: only the press, radio- and television, film production and distribution and, to a minor extent, also book publishing, have special appropriations in the state budget and their appropriations are close to nil in the municipal / city budget. Architecture and design have been subsidised as artforms, and the performing arts are considered a part of cultural services and not as branches of the culture (or creative) industries. As the professional and basic arts education are not within the jurisdiction of cultural policy decision-making but are considered part of overall educational policies, the labour market issues of culture industries have neither been dealt with in art policies and cultural policies in any other sense as artist's social welfare security.

Since the 1970s, there have been studies defining culture industries in terms of given industrial branches; in the most recent studies the culture industries have been defined as industrial sub-sectors of copyright industries. As the line is drawn between culture industries and the "rest" of the copyright industries, the latter contain computer software, information systems, advertising and mass media (the press and traditional audio-visual media, i.e. radio and television), and the culture industries, which are:

• book publishing (which, from a narrower cultural policy point of view can be restricted to cover belles-lettres and books for children and youth);
• film and video sectors;
• music industry (phonograms, concert activities);
• visual arts (art markets);
• performing arts (orchestras, theatre, opera, dance); and
• architecture, design and photography.

In this classification, artistic work and heritage are seen as basic "primary industries" for production and distribution activities and consequently cultural policies pertain only to those sub-sectors of the media and cultural production which distinctly base their value-adding processes to artistic work and heritage. This distinction is not, however, taken universally as the basis in defining either culture industries or the domains of cultural policies.

The recent Creativity Report, written under the auspices of the Ministry of Education and Culture, takes overall creativity (also in education and working life) as its starting point and, in respect to culture industries, prefers the British concept of creative industries to that of the above narrower concept. The narrower concept seems, however, to be the starting point in the recent efforts of the Ministry to start to promote cultural exports and creative industries.

There is a trend of increased internationalisation of Finnish culture industries both in terms of Finnish acquisitions of foreign companies and the acquisition of Finnish media companies by foreign companies. This development has involved competition between the major media companies of the Nordic countries, where one of their objectives has been expansion in the Baltic Sea Region. In 2001, the Finnish "media giant", SanomaWSOY, bought VNU - a Dutch journal publisher, and this and other acquisitions have boosted its turnover to 2.7 billion euros in 2006. Recently, the other two Nordic media giants, Norwegian Schibsted and Swedish Bonnier competed for ownership of the second largest Finnish media conglomerate, Alma Media and especially its television activities. Bonnier won and gained (together with Proventus Industrier AB) the control of Alma Media's commercial television channel.

The Finnish culture industries have maintained a high level of domestic content (see chapter 4.2.5).

In recent years, the main issue in the financing of culture industries has been the promotion of exports (see chapter 2.3, chapter 2.4.1 and chapter 2.4.2). From a longer time perspective, the two main topics of national debate in respect to the promotion of culture industries have been the financing of domestic film production and the switch to digital TV by the Finnish Broadcasting Company (YLE / FBC). The former debate has focussed mainly on money: the need for increased support for national film production, which has in recent years found popularity among domestic audiences and gained (especially through the success of Aki Kaurismäki's "art films" and Finnish documentaries and short films) international visibility also. The Finnish Broadcasting Company (FBC) set a close deadline for its switch to digital TV broadcasts and the economic feasibility and audience acceptance of this decision has been publicly doubted and criticised. The overall digitisation of the radio- and television broadcasts as well as developing new interactive services was made financially possible by the sale of the stocks of DIGITA (the company responsible for the stations and terrestrial broadcasting and transmission networks of the FBC) to the French company TDF. DIGITA will continue letting out the station and network services to the FBC and will also be responsible for digitising networks and providing technical solutions for interactive digital services.

The main financiers of Finnish feature film production are the Finnish Film Institute, broadcasting companies, (increasingly, only the public one, i.e. the Finnish Broadcasting Company) and AVEK (The Promotion Centre for Audiovisual Culture). AVEK is maintained by Kopiosto, the copyright organisation for copying compensation. Financing can be based on bi-lateral or trilateral agreements between these three parties. There are no longer formal contractual partnership agreements between them. The Nordic Film and Television Fund, Eurimages, and the EU Media Plus programme provides additional funding and also encourages public-private partnerships.

Public support for other branches of culture industries, especially for book and phonogram production is very limited. On the other hand, authors and translators and the authors, performers and producers in the music industry receive public copyright / neighbouring rights compensation through the copyright and neighbouring rights organisations. A certain amount of this compensation is used to finance collective services to rights owners. The main sources are library compensation, other copying compensation, including the retransmission of radio and television broadcasts, and the playing of recorded music in public spaces (including radio and television broadcasts).

Finland/ 4.2 Recent policy issues and debates

4.2.7 Employment policies for the cultural sector

Estimates of employment figures in the cultural sector vary depending on the definition of "cultural sector" and "cultural occupations". If we limit the definition to artistic professions (literature, criticism, translation, visual arts, architecture, design, performing arts and entertainment, music and musicians and some "creative" professions in audiovisual production processes) the total number in 2000 was 15 000 professionals. More than 20% were employed by art institutions, 35% worked as freelance artists and 45% in the entertainment business (musicians being the largest group). ). If we take a comprehensive definition of culture, including the media, all workers in the culture industries, advertising, crafts and related industries, libraries, museums and archives, printing, maintenance of amusement parks, etc, and take also into account all employed persons irrespective of their occupation within the cultural fields (whether they work in culture-related occupations or not), their number was as high as 85 900 in 2003, or four percent of the gainfully employed labour force. The gainfully employed in culture-related occupations, irrespective of their sector of employment, was 66 000 in 2000, and gainfully employed persons in cultural sectors working in cultural occupations was 36 700. There are, thus, four different measures of the artistic and cultural labour force; and if sectors such as printing, media technologies and advertising and related managerial occupations are subtracted from the calculations, there would be much lower figures.

The issue of employment became salient after the recession of the early 1990s, although it took some time before any measures were taken in the cultural sector. The Ministry of Education and Culture has drafted its own employment strategy, but the focus of this strategy is to enhance the functioning of the education system as a whole, not specifically education and training of artists and professionals for the cultural sector. A report on the employment effects of the cultural sector was prepared in 1997-1999, and the National Board of Education has more recently calculated the future needs for the labour force in the cultural sectors. There has been criticism that art universities and particularly the cultural and media programmes of the polytechnics are causing unemployment by admitting too many students and producing too many graduates. Calculations of the National Board of Education have supported this criticism and the Ministry has reduced the number of admissions. The working groups on culture industries and some sector-specific research projects have presented more specific proposals for developing culture industries and enhancing their employment effects.

Some Finnish cities, particularly the city of Helsinki, have prepared policy plans for the "creative industries" to promote employment opportunities. They have also worked actively with other European cities to develop creative industries in cities or specific city quarters (creative clusters).

The latest Finnish National Action Plan for Employment (October 2004), which is otherwise in accordance with the revised European Employment Strategy (EES) adopted by the European Council in 2003, does not pay any attention to cultural labour markets.

Finland/ 4.2 Recent policy issues and debates

4.2.8 New technologies and cultural policies

The previous two Finnish governments installed in 1999 and 2003 emphasised the central role of the new ICT in economic and social development, or, in more general terms, in enhancing the development of the information society. The 2003-2007 government, which proposed in its programme a number of intersectoral policy programmes, included among them a policy programme for the information society. Neither in this programme nor in a later more specific implementation strategy were the arts and culture mentioned as special target areas. On the other hand, the Ministry of Education and Culture has contributed to the national information society plans by proposing goals and means to develop Finland into a "cultured" and "enlightened" information society. The Ministry drafted two plans already in the mid- 1990s: Information Strategy for Education and Research and a report on Culture-Oriented Information Society. These documents have been updated twice, the former for the years 2000-2003 and 2004-2007, and the latter for the years 2000-2003 and 2004-2010. The most recent update of the latter document ("Culture in the Information Society") proposes strengthening cultural policy aspects within information society policies in the domains of content industries, cultural heritage, citizens' access to information and cultural services and in international and EU co-operation. Following the proposed plans and strategies the Ministry has assigned special funding for the development of a "cultural" information society. Yet most of these allocations have been channelled to education; only rather small grants and subsides have been allocated to the cultural sector itself for the digitisation of public libraries, museums and archives, for improving information systems and to some cultural information society projects.

The strategy of the Ministry of Transport and Communications has been much stronger and swifter in respect to the promotion of new information technologies. This is witnessed e.g. by the recent (2007) amendment of the Act on the Amendment of Sections 4 and 7 in the Act on Television and Radio Operations. This made the licensing of mobile television - DVB-H (Digital Broadcasting Video / Handheld) easier than licensing traditional digital terrestrial television operations. The amendment makes granting of programme operating licences for DVB-H the task of the Finnish Communications Regulatory Authority (FICORA), the independent communications regulator. There will be no rounds of invitations for applications as is the case with traditional television, but, instead, applications can be filed as needed. Programme operating licences are required for radio and television channels only. Other services, such as video on demand, multimedia and information society services, can be offered without a programme operating licence, by direct arrangement with the network operating license. However, the public service broadcaster YLE and the commercial digital terrestrial television licenses do not need a separate programme operating licence for simulcasts on the DVB-H network. Commercial negotiations are required with the network operating license, i.e. Digita, to access the network (see chapter 5.3.8).

Finland/ 4.2 Recent policy issues and debates

4.2.9 Heritage issues and policies

The big heritage issues in the early 1990s were the protection of historically valuable buildings and the urban and rural landscapes; and the most heated debate centred on the feasibility of delegating more decision-making power to the local level in matters concerning physical planning ("zoning"). During the 1991-1993 recessions these issues lost some of their relevance and the more traditional archaeological and museological issues and issues of heritage digitisation have come to the forefront. The archaeological and museological policies are planned and implemented by the National Board of Antiquities, an expert agency supervised by the Ministry of Education and Culture. The Ministry of Environment also has a central role, if the heritage concept is broadened to cover the protection of built heritage and national landscapes. In this role the Ministry of Environment is responsible for the preparation of certain national environmental and landscape protection programmes as well as national land use guidelines. Furthermore, it has actual official tasks, such as the confirmation of regional plans as well as decision-making linked with the Building Protection Act and the protection of state-owned buildings.

The outlines for the digitisation of cultural heritage for all "memory organisations" (museums, archives and libraries) are defined in the information strategy documents of the Ministry of Education and Culture and a special committee report on the heritage strategy in the information society. The digitisation is carried out in all three sectors as an integral part of all activities; the three "memory sectors" have established bodies for co-operation and the ministry has financed digitisation projects in different sectors and regions of the country.

In 2005, there were 165 professionally managed museums, with more than three hundred operating locations. Two-thirds of these museums were historical museums, the rest were special museums, arts museums and museums of natural history. Twenty of the museums are regional historical museums and 16 regional art museums. The re-organisation of the whole museum sector has been planned by an ad hoc committee, but the recent revision of the Museum Act only refines the criteria for "professionally managed" museums which are entitled to receive formula-based central government subsidy. The future of the museum sector will depend to a great extent on how the recently reformed statutory central government subsidy system will actually improve the financial situation in the museum sector. From the point of view of minorities, of importance is the SIIDA-Institute, the home of the Sámi Museum and the Northern Lapland Nature Centre. With its cultural and nature exhibitions, SIIDA provides in its collections and exhibitions items of Sámi culture and nature of Northern Lapland.

The National Board of Antiquities drafted in 2002 a proposal for the national strategy of cultural tourism, with an emphasis on sustainable development. The Finnish Tourist Board (under the Ministry of Labour and Industry) deals also with the issues of cultural tourism and the regional councils take up these issues in their regional tourism strategies.

For more information, see
European Heritage Network: Country profile Finland

Finland/ 4.2 Recent policy issues and debates

4.2.10 Gender equality and cultural policies

Gender equality has never been explicitly stated as an objective in Finnish cultural policy. Thus its development must be seen as a part of the general development of gender representation and legislative and administrative efforts to make gender representation more equal in all fields of society.

Since the 1970s, Finnish gender policies have converged into a Nordic version of "state feminism", where the main means used have been legal measures, official monitoring and positive action, including parity clauses and quotas in the representation and employment of women in the labour market. Since the Beijing Conference (Fourth World Conference on Women), government policy has been reformulated increasingly in terms of mainstreaming and along the lines expressed in the main EU documents addressing gender equality in representation, employment, career advancement and salaries. This new approach was crystallised in the revised Equality Act of 1995, the 1997 Government Programme on Equality (subtitled "From Beijing to Finland") and the further revision of the Equality Act in 2005.

As the government 1995 Bill for the Amendment of 1986 Equality Act was presented to Parliament, the need for new legislation was justified in terms that "...in many respects the goals (of the previous legislation) have not been achieved. Despite changes in legislation the position of women is still distinctly lower than that of men in working life, in the family and in the decision-making mechanisms of society. Especially in working life the objectives of equality have not been achieved. The new law aims at recognising these problems and solving them".

Despite these general arguments, the main practical consequence of the 1995 revision of the Equality Act was the centralisation of responsibilities for monitoring gender equality and the enforcement of a quota requirement for equal representation of men and women (min. 40% of both genders) in state and municipal executive and expert bodies. The latter stipulation has altered the "gate-keeping system" in the arts and culture, because e.g. the arts councils and municipal boards responsible for cultural affairs must comply with its quota requirement. The 1997 government programme for equality and the equality provisions in the programmes of the subsequent governments in 1999 and 2003 have underlined the need to mainstream all public programmes and legislation pertaining to central government and municipal administration activities. Extensive research and development activities have been initiated and they have also covered the arts and culture.

Despite these legislative and research and development activities, the issues of equal pay and the modes of monitoring gender differences in wages, salaries, recruitment procedures and promotion have remained controversial from a gender equality point of view. The new 2005 revision of the Equality Act aims at solving these controversies by expanding the obligation of public agencies and private enterprises to present annual (or at least triennial) equality plans with detailed gender equality accounts. This obligation was also expanded to cover secondary and higher level educational institutions, including the art universities.

In 2004, the Ministry of Education and Culture contracted CUPORE, the Foundation for Cultural Policy Research, to carry out an equality evaluation in the main domains of cultural policy. The evaluation report, identifying inequalities and proposing methods for effective mainstreaming, was delivered to the Ministry in October 2004. Its main recommendations were included in the Government Equality Programme for the years 2004-2007.

Finland/ 4. Current issues in cultural policy development and debate

4.3 Other relevant issues and debates

The listing, in chapter 3.3, of the more recent policy objectives and the identification, in chapter 4.1, of the main trends in policy issues and priorities cover all the main relevant issues and topics of debates in the Finnish contemporary cultural policy scene. We can, however, add to these lists the debate concerning the problems of two national cultural institutions, the Finnish National Opera (FNO) and the Finnish Broadcasting Company (FBC).

The troubles of the FNO started in 2005, when, after an artistically successful previous year, the box-office income fell drastically and the annual deficit of the financial year was 1.8 million euros. It proved impossible to cover the deficit in 2006; there were plans to reduce the regular personnel by 40 staff members and the number of performances by 20%; all staff members were due to be laid off for two months in spring 2007. The protests of the staff and the resignation of the newly appointed musical director led, finally, to the resignation of the General Director. The new stream-lined Executive Board, headed by the former Governor of the Bank of Finland and the new General Director, confirmed a reform programme, reducing personnel by 54 persons by the year 2010 and costs worth 2.8 million euros annually.

Two more general questions were in the background of this development. What level of artistic ambition is appropriate for a small country; and what is an appropriate share of the total public financing to be used for the National Opera? A further question was who should have the right to decide these issues.

The troubles of the Finnish Broadcasting Company (YLE) started with the decision to switch to digital broadcasts. The deadline for antenna networks was 1 September 2007; after that, the viewers had to have a digital adapter or digital television set; the cable companies could convert the digital channels to analogue format until February 2008. The problem with adapters, the YLE's inability to maintain clear subtitling in the digital broadcasts and the general confusion in programme planning, led to protests: an increasing number left their license fee unpaid and financial losses amounted to millions of euros. At present (December 2007), 200 000 households watch without paying. As the YLE had just managed to decrease its annual deficit from 51 million euros to 17 million euros, it had to start new cost-cutting programmes, which has infuriated employees. Due to the need for cost-cutting, the YLE also announced that it can no longer be a co-sponsor, with the state and the City of Helsinki, in the construction of the new Helsinki Music Centre, which is to provide the home concert hall for the Helsinki City Orchestra, as well as for the Radio Symphony Orchestra.

These two cases are only extensions of a more general concern whether the present level of public financing of the arts and culture can be maintained on the present level, where it has been slowly raised after the economic recession of 1991-1993. This concern is linked to a specific issue: the need to maintain and reform the unique feature of the Finnish financing system. The public financing system was built in the 1970s and 1980s, year after year, increasingly by the money that the Ministry received from the annual profits of the government monopoly company -Veikkaus Ltd, which operates the lottery, lotto and sports betting activities. After the recession of 1991-1993, the costs of public cultural services - especially the central government transfers to the municipal public library system - were increasingly financed from these profits. Due to the unrealistic expectations of the lottery profits, the decrease in profits in 2001-2002 caused financing problems and exacerbated disputes between grant recipients (arts and culture, scientific research, youth and sports). All of these issues, as well as increased competition from Internet betting, precipitated a reform of the legislation. The reform of the National Lottery Act - which actually covers, in addition to the lotto, lottery and sports betting, the entire "gambling sectors" - activated all relevant interest groups of present and potential beneficiaries. A solution satisfying all interested parties was achieved and new legislation enacted. At the same time, it was stipulated that the central government subsidies to public libraries would be gradually financed from regular budget appropriations ("tax-payers money"), not from the profits of Veikkaus. In recent years, these profits have been rather high and regular state budget funding has also been substantially increased (see chapter 6).

However, this legislative achievement has been overshadowed by another issue that has its roots in new technologies and the globalising of betting markets. This issue is whether national gambling monopolies can be justified when the restrictions on free competition in the service sector are otherwise abolished. There has been direct pressure to abolish national monopoly legislation by such international betting companies as British Ladbrokes, which has tried in several law suits to prove that national lottery and game monopolies violate EU legislation on free competition. So far, the European Court of Justice has not taken a definite stand in the case of gambling monopolies and the situation did not change as the new EU directive on the liberalisation of trade and services was enacted. In any case, national lottery monopoly companies, including Veikkaus Ltd, will face ever-hardening competition vis-à-vis Internet transmitted betting and games.

The issue of maintaining the present publicly subsidised cultural service systems has a broader ramification as regards the role of the arts and culture in regional and local development. Cultural statistics and studies indicate that despite the maintenance of these systems, artistic and cultural activities and the cultural labour force are concentrating in major cities and especially in the Helsinki Metropolitan Area. One proposed solution to maintain equitable service provision has been "decentralised concentration", that is centralising services to major regional centres which provide networked services to the whole region.

However, to a certain extent, the funding of cultural projects within the programmes financed from the EU Structural Funds has proved that culture is an important dimension of development. The Regional Development Strategy of the Ministry of Education and Culture for the years 2003-2013 set eight objectives. Three of them relate to equity of services, maintenance of local and regional heritage values, identity and protection of aesthetic environments; five objectives relate to the economic and social benefits accruing from enhanced regionally equitable cultural development. The strategy, however, proposes only a few concrete means for achieving these objectives.

Finland/ 5.1 General legislation

5.1.1 Constitution

The following provisions of the new Finnish Constitution (1999) have immediate relevance for focusing and limiting the sphere of cultural policies. The first item defines the Constitutional basis of cultural policy decision-making and administration; the other Constitutional provisions guarantee citizens' rights and liberties - including freedom of the arts - and the cultural rights of minorities.

Chapter 1, Section 6, states the equality principle that applies to "everybody", not only to Finnish citizens; this is, of course, relevant from the point of view of aliens and non-naturalised immigrants;

Chapter 2, Section 12, guarantees freedom of expression but also stipulates potential restrictions relating to pictorial programmes that are necessary for the protection of children and may be laid down by an Act; section 16 (on Educational Rights) guarantees the freedom of science, the arts and higher education;

Chapter 2, Section 17, defines Swedish language as a parallel national language to Finnish, designates Sami, Roma and Finnish Sign Language as minority languages and Sami as an indigenous culture and stipulates the rights of the Sami and other minority groups to develop their own language and culture;

Chapter 11, Sections 120, stipulates that the Island / Province of Aland will have an autonomous status such as will be defined by special legislation;

Chapter 11, Section 121, guarantees cultural autonomy for the Sami living in the Sami Homeland municipalities (in Lapland).

Finland/ 5.1 General legislation

5.1.2 Division of jurisdiction

The Finnish cultural policy system evolves along the state-municipalities axis. The constitution and legislation on municipal administration defines the role of municipalities vis-à-vis the state.

Despite the autonomy of the municipalities (which includes rights to define the rate of municipal income tax), municipal cultural institutions are to a large extent dependant on central government subsidies (transfers) to the municipalities. These subsidies, aiming at equity in the regional and local provision of performing arts and cultural services, go either to municipalities and through municipalities to the municipal cultural institutions and activities), or directly to cultural and art institutions which are operated as non-profit organisations (usually associations of foundations). In the former case, it is up to the municipalities to decide to what extent they use the subsidies for the purpose they were calculated to be used.

The central government system is also decentralised to a large extent: the role of the main cultural and art institutions, agencies and arm's length bodies is defined by specific legislation. The Constitution stipulates that no non-public organisation can exercise authoritative public decision-making powers without such special legislation.

Alongside the Constitution, the key pieces of legislation on the jurisdictional division between the state and in cultural sector are:

• Act on Municipalities (365/1995),), which defines the basic principles of local self-government and administration and the relations between central government (the state) and local self-government; amended frequently, the latest amendments in 2006 and 2007 have aimed at clarifying the corporate structure of municipal organisations and at enhancing the role of political representatives vis-à-vis professional managers;
• Act on Central Government Transfers to Municipalities (1147/1996): a general Financing Law which defines the relative share of the state and municipalities in financing basic public services and the rules for calculating the amount of transfers (state subsidies) to municipalities; frequent amendments, the latest Bill (2007) aims at stabilising .the relative shares of the state and municipalities taking into consideration the paid inflation compensation of the earlier years and the fluctuating economic state of municipalities.

The special instances of autonomy and cultural rights are defined in the Constitution and specified with special legislation (see chapter 5.2, category XII of the listed legislation and chapter 5.1.9 on language legislation).

Finland/ 5.1 General legislation

5.1.3 Allocation of public funds

The following Acts provide the legislative basis for financing the arts and culture. The first Act provides the legal and administrative basis for the national lotto, lottery and sports betting monopoly and the second Act specifies the use of profits. The remaining Acts provide the legislative framework for state transfers (subsidies) to municipal and local cultural activities and services (including the financing of local / municipal theatres and orchestras). These acts are frequently accompanied with decrees by the Council of State (Cabinet) or the ministries, which specify in greater detail e.g. the tasks and criteria of professionalism of the institutions. While debating and confirming the annual state budget, Parliament can also pass temporary exceptions to general financial legislation (Budget Laws). Consequently the acts have frequent, (and sometimes even a long row of similar annual) amendments.

Table 5:     Legislation covering the allocation of public funds in the cultural sector

LEGISLATION	COMMENTS
Lottery Act (1047/2001) and Pool Betting Decree (241/1993)	The act and the decree give the government the right to contract a monopoly of 1) lottery / lotto, football pools and betting, 2) slot-machines and casinos, and 3) harness race betting to their appropriate organisers; orders the returns to be channelled to the state budget and earmarks their use to specific "good" purposes
Act Regulating the Use of the Profits of Lottery / Lotto, Football Pools and Betting (1054/2001)	Defines the shares of the annual returns of lottery / lotto and sports betting as follows: 25% to sports, 5% to youth policy measures, 17.5% for scientific research and 35% to the arts
Act on Central Government Transfers to Municipalities (1147/1996), frequent amendments for levelling local and regional inequalities, compensating inflation and taking other financial transaction between central government and municipalities into account.	General financing law defining the relative share of the state and municipalities in producing public services and provides the basic rules for calculating and allocating the transfer of state subsidies to municipalities
Act on Financing Education and Culture (originally 705/1992; now 635/1998), main amendments 1186/1999, 1071/2005, a new amendment will be passed by Parliament as a Budget Law in 2007.	Specific Financing Law defining the rules for calculating and allocating central government transfers (subsidies) to municipal and none-profit service organisation including professional local and regional theatres, museums, orchestras and libraries and organisers of basic arts education
Municipal Cultural Activities Act (728/1992, amended 1681/1992)	Legislative basis for the central government support to non-institutional cultural activities in municipalities
Museums Act (729/1992, amended 1959/1995, 1166/1996, 877/2005, 1076/2005)	Legislative basis defining professional museums eligible for central government subsidies according to the "financing law"
Theatres and Orchestras Act (730/1992, Parliament has recently passed an amendment, which adds criteria emphasising artistic aspirations over and above sheer commercial success	Legislative basis defining professional theatres and orchestras eligible for central government subsidies according to the "financing law"
(Public) Library Act, (904/1998), specified by Decree 1078/199, defining the tasks of the central Library and regional libraries in the public library system	Legislative basis defining the tasks of public (municipal) libraries eligible for central government subsidies according to the "financing law"
Act on Discretionary Government Transfers, (688/2001)	Act lays down the grounds and procedures that apply to granting discretionary government transfers (occasional grants-in-aid) to socially or culturally important activities or projects.

Source:      Data Bank FINLEX http://www.finlex.fi/en/

Finland/ 5.1 General legislation

5.1.4 Social security frameworks

Cultural workers, including most of the cultural professionals employed in publicly owned or publicly supported cultural service systems - including the performing arts - are covered by the compulsory social security and pension systems. The same is the case with those who are more permanently employed by enterprises of the culture industries and by professional / trade associations in the fields of the arts and culture. This overall social security protection does not, however, cover free (self-employed) artists and free-lance cultural workers.

There have been attempts to improve the unemployment insurance and social security system of (especially pension system) of other self-employed artists and non-taxable grant receivers. The general pension law, the Act on the Pensions of Artists and Some Particular Groups of Short-Time Workers, has standardised the situation for freelance artists and professionals who are employed and working in the premises of an employer. The position of the "free artists" and persons enjoying non-taxable grants has remained weak. There have been demands for reforms in three areas:

• to include unemployment insurance and pension payments as part of the social security costs, even in the accumulation of shorter-term grants;
• to make the tax-deductions, pension and social security system of artists and freelancers relate better to the uneven and varied flow of artists' income; and
• to improve the rights of artists as freelance entrepreneurs.

Some progress has been made in all of these areas (e.g. in relation to the insurance and pension payments based on the accumulation of artists' grants), but most reform proposals still wait to be enacted legislatively. It seems that the proposal, which will offer the possibility for free artists and freelancers to enrol in the pension insurance system of agricultural entrepreneurs, may offer the best reform alternative.

For more information, see our Status of Artists section. 

Finland/ 5.1 General legislation

5.1.5 Tax laws

There are no legislation or special administrative arrangements that would offer incentives for sponsorship. On the other hand, income taxation legislation (Income Tax Act, paragraph 57) offers tax deductions within a narrow general limit (min. 850 euros, max. 27 000 euros) for donations to the state, universities or to non-profit organisations in the arts and science which are considered culturally significant by a special Tax Relief Board. Tax-deductible donations for the preservation of national cultural heritage do not have an upper limit.

The Income Tax Act (paragraph 22) also defines the criteria for non-profit organisations ("organisations accruing collective benefits"), which can have income tax relief for their small-scale non-commercial business activities. The Value Added Tax Act considers organisations obliged to pay VAT if, on the basis of the Income Tax Act, they are considered liable to pay income tax. There have been debates under which condition this tax relief may be in conflict with the EU Treaty, Article 87, which prohibits competition distorting subsidies or financial transfers of any other forms of resources to market organisations.

Regarding tax rates, the Finnish VAT Act has been enacted to suit the valid EC / EU VAT directives. The basic VAT-rate in Finland is 22%. The rate of VAT is 8% for books and income fees of cultural, art and entertainment services and performances (entrance fees to museums, box office receipts from cinemas, theatres, orchestras and circus, music and dance performances). The VAT-rate on the price of newspapers and journals is zero. Sales of works of art in art galleries initially had a zero-rate of VAT; this however was revised on the basis of a decision by the European Court of Justice which found that these sales are not services and therefore must be taxed at the basic rate - which has been the case since the corresponding amendment of the VAT-legislation in 2002. The VAT on sales of (not-exported) work of art, by artists or by individual owners of artist's rights, is eight per cent.

Finland/ 5.1 General legislation

5.1.6 Labour laws

The main legal instruments that regulate the use of the Finnish labour force are the Act on Labour Contracts and the Act on Civil Servants. Both define the rights of the employees and the obligations of the employers. The Finnish tri-partite system of collective bargaining (income negotiations) "activates" these laws regularly and may result in their revision. They - as well as the rounds of collective bargaining - are relevant from the point of view of performing arts and cultural services. Self-employed artists and freelance workers are, of course, outside these laws and the more comprehensive system of collective bargaining, although the result of the latter may influence also the level of income the latter groups receive from their work.

General labour laws also have regulations that concern discrimination, yet the protection against gender discrimination is stipulated in the Equality Act (see chapter 4.2.10).

For more information, see our Status of Artists section. 

Finland/ 5.1 General legislation

5.1.7 Copyright provisions

The present Finnish Copyright Act was passed in 1961, and has been altered twenty times since then. The recent twenty-first change was in October 2005 after a three year controversial preparation process. At the final stage, the Government Bill was heavily criticised and was finally passed after a clause on monitoring the future development and potential revision from the point of view of consumer interests was included. The critics argued that the new act is stricter than was required by the EU Directive in respect to private copying and the criminalisation of supplying and possessing programmes for removing copy protection encoding (see chapter 4.3).

Despite the conflict concerning the new copyright act, it probably will have only minor effects on the functioning of the Finnish copyright system in practice. Within the legislative frame of the Copyright Act, the main copyright and neighbouring rights organisations (of authors and translators, composers, performing artists, producers of records and audiovisual programme etc.) will also in the future protect effectively authors' and producers' rights and the rights for the public performance of music and the reproduction rights. The Finnish Copyright Law stipulates that an extended collective licence permits the use of an author's work or an artist's performance, when a licence agreement has been reached between the user and the copyright management / compensation collecting organisation (CMO), representing a reasonably high number of Finnish authors and performers in a particular field.

Since 1984, there has been a system of collecting levies on copying media. The products subject to a levy include, at present, all recordable audio and video devices that are used for private copying, such as blank VHS tapes, CDs, and DVDs, as well as digital audio and video recorders (e.g. mp3 players and HDD video recorders). In 2000-2005, the annual returns of the system have been around 10-12 million euros. These returns are allocated by the Ministry of Education and Culture to the main copyright organisations, which distribute them partly directly to the copyright owners, partly as indirect collective compensation for training, R&D and production subsidies. The collective compensations are also administered by the copyright organisations or their promotion centres, such as AVEK, the Promotion Centre for Audiovisual Culture, ESEK (the Performed Music Promotion Centre) and LUSES (the Music Creation Promotion Centre).

The main copyright collecting organisations are Kopiosto (reprographic and digitation compensation, radio- and television programme retransmission compensation and private copying compensation), Teosto (music authors' and publishers' rights compensation, private copying compensation, public music playing compensation) and Gramex (music neighbouring rights compensation, private copying compensation). The total returns to Kopiosto in 2006 were 24.8 million euros; the corresponding returns in music copyright and neighbouring rights to Teosto and Gramex were together about 66 million euros. Other less prominent, but evolving, CMOs are Kuvasto (for visual arts), Sanasto (for writers and translators) and Tuotos (for producers in the culture industries).

The Ministry of Education and Culture is responsible for copyright legislation and administration. Teosto (see above) has been contracted by the Ministry of Education and Culture to collect the compensation from the levy on media copying. Teosto has a special unit, the Private Copying Unit, for this purpose. The CMOs also have a joint organisation, the Copyright Information and Anti-Piracy Centre, for monitoring and preventing copyright violation.

Finland/ 5.1 General legislation

5.1.8 Data protection laws

The three main laws are the Personal Data File Act (523/1999), the Act on the Exercise of Freedom of Expression in Mass Media (460/2003) and the Act on the Protection of Privacy in Electronic Communication (516/2004). The first of these laws (harmonised in 1998 to concur with Directive 95/46/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council) pertains to the protection of individuals with regard to the processing of personal data and on the free movement of such data. The second law stipulates the responsibility of publishers and producers of public performances and network communications in respect of preventing the publishing of false or insulting information on individual actors. The third law is on public data service providers, to protect the confidentiality of communication and privacy of the users of communication networks. The protection of individual privacy is also stipulated in general terms in the Finnish Constitution.

The implementation of the data protection legislation is organised by the Data Protection Ombudsman and the Data Protection Board. The implications of this legislation and its management for cultural policy can be seen in three areas: 1) protection of persons belonging to minority groups, 2) direct advertising in culture industries, 3) protection of personal privacy vis-à-vis media exposure and the media's right of expression.

There are no studies yet on how all these national and EU legislations and their implementation might have started to shape the media, cultural industries and cultural policy implementation.

Finland/ 5.1 General legislation

5.1.9 Language laws

The Swedish-speaking Finnish population is not only a national minority. The basic ideology of nation-building stipulates that Finland has two parallel cultures, one based on the Swedish-language and the other on the Finnish-language. The rights of the Swedish-speaking population are guaranteed in the newly re-codified Finnish Constitution (1999) and further enacted by a special Language Act, which, together with some special laws, provides for equality for official (administrative, court) use of the native language and access to education and public careers. The new Language Act was passed in 2003 and was enforced from the beginning of 2004; it does not expand language rights but aims at better safeguarding of these rights in practice.

The Constitution gives a special position also to Sami people (as an indigenous culture), to the Roma people and to the users of sign language by mentioning them specifically, but guarantees all minority groups the right "...to maintain and develop their own language and culture". The language rights of these minorities, as well as foreigners, in legal and administrative processes are guaranteed with laws and statutes. The cultural rights of these groups are also enshrined by the ratification of international conventions, especially by the European Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities and the European Charter for the Protection of Regional or Minority Languages.

Finland/ 5.2 Legislation on culture

Finnish politicians and civil servants still often repeat an old adage inherited from the period of Swedish rule: "land skall med lag byggas" (the nation shall be built by laws). This, of course, refers first and foremost to Constitutional order, but it is also the basic principle of policy implementation. Even the reforms that characterised the construction of the Finnish welfare state were legislatively enshrined, and the easiest way to identify the principal elements of Finnish cultural policy is to examine the corpus of laws and statutes pertaining to the cultural sector.

Table 6 below gives an overall view of legislation currently in force by the end of 2005 that directly addresses cultural policy issues or indirectly shapes them. It also indicates some recent amendments, which, in a way, document the implementation of the new policy objectives and items of debates listed in chapter 4.3. The comments in the right hand column explain the contents and cultural policy relevance of the listed legislative acts, decrees and international conventions and agreements. More details on sector specific legislation are available in chapters 5.3.1 - 5.3.10.

The Table in toto demonstrates the supremacy of Parliament as the final instance in deciding not only annual state budgets but also more stable legal frameworks for public financing; the first section (Section I) indicates the role of the Council of State not only as the main initiator of new legislation, but also the top echelon of public administration and as the co-ordinating executor of overall central government policies.

The horizontal decentralisation of the Finnish cultural policy system as discussed in chapter 3.3 is reflected in the laws and decrees found throughout Table 6. The role of agencies and arm's length bodies, regional authorities and the autonomous local administration (municipalities) becomes apparent in the section listing the more specific legislation concerning the financing of the arts and culture.

Table 6:     Current legislation pertaining to cultural policy and cultural administration in Finland

MAIN CATEGORIES OF CULTURAL POLICY LEGISLATION	COMMENTS
I. CULTURAL POLICY DECISION-MAKING AND ADMINISTRATION
Decree on the Ministry of Education and Culture (162/1997, amended 873/1997, 170/1998, 442/2000, 319/2000); Ordinance on the Organisation and Functions of the Ministry of Education (380/2003).	These enactments stipulate the structure and functioning of the Ministry. The higher legislative basis consists of the Constitution (731/1999); the Act on the Council of State 175/2003; the Ordinance on the Organisation and Functions of the Ministries (262/2003, frequent amendments).)
Act on Organising the  Promotion of the Arts (328/1967, amended 635/1997, 366/2000, 667/2002, 283/2004))	Created the present system of national and regional arts councils
Act (1401/2006) and Decree (311/2007) on the (EU) Structural Funds	Organises the relationship between the national authorities and administrative units in planning, financing and implementing the programmes financed within the framework of EU Structural Funds
Decree of the Ministry of Education on the jurisdiction of the Board of Education and Province Offices in the Management of Structural Funds Administration (933/2001)	Delegates the planning, implementing and decision-making functions of the Ministry in the EU Structural Funds Programme to the Board of Education and Provincial Offices
Act on the National Board of Antiquities (282/2004, original 31/1972, amended 1016/1987, 1080/2001)	Defines the task and organisation of the main expert and policy implementing body of heritage policies.
Decree on the National Board of Antiquities (417/2004)	Specified the Act on the Board of Antiquities e.g. in respect of the status of the National Museum
Act on Finnish National Gallery (Art Museum) Act (566/2000, amended 504/2004; original act 186/1990)	Provides an umbrella organisation for three state-owned art museums: domestic, foreign and contemporary art museums
Acts on Finnish Film Archive  (891/1978) and on the Archiving of Films (576/1984)	Organise the national administration of film archiving
Act on the Library for the Visually Impaired ( 638/1996, amended 835/1998, originally 11/1978)	Provides national book services for the visually impaired
Decree on the Board for Specific Grants to Visual Artists (116/1997)	Organises the administration of compensation for displaying public art works in public places
Act on the Classification of Audiovisual Programmes (775/2000) and the Board of Film Classification (776/2000)	Age classification of programmes for the protection of children against exhibition of pornography and violence; violations punishable according to Chapter 17 of the Finnish Penal Code
Act for the Promotion of Film Art (28/2000)	Provides a legal basis for the activities of the Finnish Film Foundation (founded in 1969) to support national film production
II. PROMOTING THE ARTS, ARTISTS AND CREATIVITY
Act on Art Professors' and Artists' State-Grants (734/1969, amended 143/1995, 367/2000, 666/2002, 196/2005)	Provides the legislative basis for the artists' grants system; amendment 143/1995 abolished the 15-year grants and made the system more purposeful
Act on Grants and Subsidies for Authors and Translators (236/1961, amended 1080/83, 1067/1993, 1272/1994, 1358/1995, 1040/1996249/ 2002, 665/2002)	Provides grants to authors and translators to compensate the library use of their works
Act on Some Specific Grants for Visual Artists (115/1997, amended 664/2002)	Provides grants for visual artists for the public display of their works
Council of State Decision on Extraordinary Artists' Pensions ( 75/1974)	Provides additional pensions for senior artists and finances their artistic work
Act on State Guarantees for Art Exhibitions (411/1986, amended 639/1991, 336/1994, 390/1997, 1116/2001))	Guarantees insurance for the organiser of art exhibitions
Act on the Pensions of Artists and Some Particular Groups of Short-Time Workers (662/1985, amended frequently).	Safeguards the pension payments and pension rights in short-term employment contracts that are typical for musicians, performing artists, journalists, set-designers, etc.
III. FINANCING CULTURAL AND ART INSTITUTIONS AND CULTURAL SERVICES
Act on Central Government Transfers to Municipalities (1147/1996), frequent amendments for levelling local and regional inequalities, compensating inflation and taking other financial transaction between central government and municipalities into account.	General financing law defining the relative share of the state and municipalities in producing public services and provides the basic rules for calculating and allocating the transfer of state subsidies to municipalities.
Act on Financing Education and Culture (originally 705/1992; now 635/1998), main amendments 1186/1999, 1071/2005, a new amendment will be passed by Parliament as a Budget Law in 2007.	Specific "financing law" defining the rules for calculating and allocating central government transfers (subsidies) to municipal and none-profit service organisation including professional local and regional theatres, museums, orchestras and libraries and organisers of basic arts education
Lottery Act (1047/2001) and Pool Betting Decree (241/1993)	The act  and the decree give the government the right to contract a monopoly of 1) lottery / lotto, football pools and betting, 2) slot-machines and casinos, and 3) harness race betting to their appropriate organisers; orders the returns to be channelled to the state budget and earmarks their use to specific "good" purposes
Act Regulating the Use of the Profits of Lottery / Lotto, and Sports Betting (1054/2001).	Defines the share of the annual returns of lottery / lotto, and sports betting as follows: 25% to sports, 5% to youth policy measures, 17.5% for scientific research and 35% to the arts
Government Decree on Organising Lotteries (1345/2001)	Specifies the technical rules for minor (non-monetary prize) lotteries organised e.g. by voluntary associations to finance "good causes"
IV. PROFESSIONAL CULTURAL AND ART INSTITUTIONS AND MUNICIPAL CULTURAL SERVICES
Act on the National Board of Antiquities (282/2004, original 31/1972, amended 1016/1987, 1080/2001)	Defines the task and organisation of the main expert and policy implementing body of heritage policies.
Decree on the National Board of Antiquities (417/2004)	Specified the Act on the Board of Antiquities e.g. in respect of the status of the National Museum
Act on Finnish National Gallery (Art Museum) Act (566/2000, amended 504/2004; original act 186/1990)	Provides an umbrella organisation for three state-owned art museums: domestic, foreign and contemporary art museums
Acts on Finnish Film Archive Act (891/1978) and on the Archiving of Films (576/1984)	Organise the national administration of film archiving
Act on the Library for the Visually Impaired ( 638/1996, amended 835/1998, originally 11/1978)	Provides national book services for the visually impaired
Municipal Cultural Activities Act (728/1992, amended 1681/1992)	Legislative basis for the central government support to non-institutional cultural activities in municipalities
Museums Act (729/1992, amended 1959/1995, 1166/1996, 877/2005, 1076/2005)	Legislative basis defining professional museums eligible for central government subsidies according to the "financing law"
Theatres and Orchestras Act (730/1992. Parliament has recently passed an amendment, which adds criteria emphasising artistic aspirations over and above sheer commercial success.	Legislative basis defining professional theatres and orchestras eligible for central government subsidies according to the "financing law"
(Public) Library Act (904/1998), specified by Decree 1078/1998 defining the tasks of the central Library  and regional libraries in the public library system	Legislative basis defining the tasks of public (municipal) libraries eligible for central government subsidies according to the "financing law"
Act on Discretionary Government Transfers (688/2001)	Act lays down the grounds and procedures that apply to granting discretionary government transfers (occasional grants-in-aid) to socially or culturally important activities or projects.
V. ADULT EDUCATION
Act on Voluntary Adult Education (632/1998, amended  1292/2004, 1200/2004))	A new integrating law that defines the traditional forms of voluntary adult education and lays the ground for public support
Decree on Voluntary Adult Education (805/1998)	Specifies the previous act
VI. ARTS EDUCATION AND TRAINING OF THE ARTISTS
Higher Education Development Act (1052/1986, amended 1207/1993, 943/1996, 1279/2001)	Guarantees stable financing of the universities - including art universities (University for Art and Design, Sibelius-Academy. Academy of Fine Arts, Theatre Academy) - and defines related performance expectations
Universities Act (645/1997 amended 1059/1998, numerous other amendments).	Defines the units, structure, functioning and internal and external organisation of the system of universities, including art universities (see the comment above).
Act on Basic Education in the Arts (originally 424/1992, now 633/1998, amended 518/2000)	Integrates the organisation of extracurricular art education for children and youth and lays the basis for its public financing
Vocational Education Act (630/1998, frequent amendments	Legislative basis for lower vocational education, including culture (handicraft, design, audiovisual media, visual expression, dance and music )
Polytechnics Act (351/2003 and Decree (351/2003)	Define the objectives and organisation of polytechnic education, including higher professional / vocational education in the arts, culture, media and humanities
Act on Pilot Programme on Postgraduate Studies in Polytechnic Institutions (645/2001)	A further step to remodel polytechnics to parallel universities degree structure
VII. BROADCASTING, FILM, MASS MEDIA, CULTURE INDUSTRIES
Film Art Promotion Act (28/2000)	This act provides a legal basis for the functioning of the Finnish Film Institute
Decree on the Promotion of Film Art (121/2000)	Specifies the previous act
Act on Radio and Television Activities (744/1998)	Defines the prerequisites for the broadcasting operations and their licensing by public authorities
Act on the Finnish Broadcasting Company (FBC, 1380/1993, amended 746/1998)	Defines the role of the FBC as a public service radio and television company and defines the mode of its (parliamentary) control
Act on the Classification of Audiovisual Programmes (775/2000) and the Board of Film Classification (776/2000)	Age classification of programmes for the protection of children against exhibition of pornography and violence; violations punishable according to Chapter 17 of the Finnish Penal Code
VIII. TAXATION
Act on Value Added Tax (1501/1993), especially amendments 1265/1997 and 1071/2001 of paragraph 85a that defines a lower tax rate (8%) for cultural products (books) and cultural and entertainment services (tickets to performing arts, performances, cinema, zoo, museums, etc.)	Several amendments due to the EU directives, the latest (1071/2002) extended the law to cover the trade on art objects
Decree on Value Added Tax (50/1994)	Specifies the previous law
IX. FREE COMPETITION
Act on Competition Restrictions (480/1992), major amendment 400/2003, 447-448/2004, (318/2004) Act on the Finnish Competition Authority (711/1988) Decree on the Finnish Competition Authority (66/1993) Market Court Act (1527/2001)	Bases of the Finnish legislation on competition restriction and it administration; harmonised to correspond to the EU directives
X. COPYRIGHT AND NEIGHBOURING RIGHTS
Copyright Act (original 174/1927, now 404/1961, twenty-one amendments). The latest amendment  bill precipitated by the Directive 2001/29/EC on the harmonisation of certain aspects of copyright and related rights in the information society was not passed by Parliament in 2002, was drafted anew and presented to the present Parliament in March 2004 and was passed in October 2005. Parallel to this process Parliament has decided on the ratification of the WIPO Copyright Treaty and the WIPO Treaty on Performances and Phonograms.	Numerous special amendments due to the EU copyright directives and international agreements; an extensive system of copyright organisations has evolved for enforcement of the law and for collecting and distributing the revenues of copyright compensation.
XI. CULTURAL HERITAGE
Museums Act (729/1992, amended 1459/1995, 1166/1996, 1076/2005)	Legal bases for professional museum activities and their organisation
Act on Archaeological Sites  (295/1963, amended 68/1995, 563/1995, 702/1995, 798/1996)	Provides legislative basis for protection of sites and their excavation
Archives Act (831/1994, previous act 184/1981)	Provides legislative basis for the National Archive system and for the principles regarding the deposit of relevant archive materials in and support for public and private archives
Decree on Archives (1012/1982)	Specifies the previous act
Act on Film Archiving (576/1984)	Provides legislative basis and principles for archiving film material
Physical Planning and Construction Act (132/1999)	Provides the legislative basis for physical planning and protection of the built environment
Protection of Buildings Act (60/1985, amended 1152/1993)	Provides a legislative resort for the protection of historically significant buildings
Act on Restricting Export of Objects of Cultural Value (previously 445/1978, now 115/1999)	Takes into consideration the Council Regulation (EEC) 3911/1992
Act on the Administration of the Suomenlinna Fortress (1145/1988)	Provides the legislative basis for the administration of a fortress site that belongs to the UNESCO World Heritage List
XII. MINORITIES AND IMMIGRANTS
Finnish Constitution (731/1999), paragraph 17	Defines the Swedish language as a parallel national language to Finnish, specifies Sami, Rom and Finnish Sign Language as minority languages; designates Sami as an indigenous culture and stipulates the rights of the Sami and other minority groups to develop their own culture
Language Act (423/2003, originally 148/1922) ) and Sami Language Act (1080/2003, originally 516/1991)	The Language Act specifies the right and obligation for official use of the two national languages in different Swedish-Finnish population contexts. The Sami Language Act provides for the right to use the Sami language officially at least through interpretation and to receive official documents in Sami.
Decree on the Board for Developing the Official Use of the Swedish Language (1037/2000)	Provides an agency for co-ordinating and developing the official use of the Swedish language
Finnish Constitution, paragraph 121	Guarantees cultural autonomy for the Sami living in Sami Homeland municipalities
Act on the Sami Parliament (974/1995, amended 975/1995, 1726/1995, 888/1996)	Provides the legislative basis for the advisory elected body that must be heard in Sami affairs
Act on the Autonomy of Aland (144/1991)	Stipulates the internationally and constitutionally confirmed autonomy of the province of Aland
Finnish Constitution, Chapter 2	Deals with human rights issues from general equality and discrimination to educational rights and rights to own native language and culture
Aliens Act (301/2004, frequent amendments)	Stipulates the rules for foreigners to enter and stay in Finland, defines their human and political rights and rights to stay and unite with their family members; the law has been amended numerous times; a new integrative bill is currently going through the parliamentary process
Decree on Labour Offices Authorised to Carry out Tasks Stipulated in the Aliens Act, 421/2006	Specifies the previous law, defines its implementers at regional level of the state administration
Act on the Integration of Immigrants and Reception of  Refugees (493/1999, amended 118/2002, 1292/2002, 1215/205)	Guarantees the material and economic basis for the immediate care and integration of immigrants and refugees
Decree on the Integration of Immigrants and Reception of Refugees (511/1999)	Specifies the previous law
XIII. INTERNATIONAL CULTURAL CO-OPERATION
Decree on the National Entry into Force of the Constitution of UNESCO (549/1956, amended 426/1967)	International agreements, conventions, charters, etc. are entered in force by national legislation (by acts of Parliament or decrees) that incorporate them into national legislation or amends the latter to the required extent.
Decree on the National Commission for UNESCO (163/1966, amended 1168/1992)	See the comment above
Decree on the National Entry into Force of the Constitution of the Council of Europe (410/1989)	See the comment above
Decree on the National Entry into Force of the European Cultural Convention (98/1970)	See the comment above
Decree on the National Entry into Force of the Nordic Cultural Treaty (909/1971)	Se the comment above
Decree on the National Entry into Force of the Statutes of the Nordic Cultural Fund (199/1977)	See the comment above
XIV. THE MAJOR INTERNATIONAL CONVENTIONS, CHARTERS AND AGREEMENTS ON HUMAN AND CULTURAL RIGHTS RATIFIED BY FINLAND
ICCPR, International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights ICESCR, International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights CERD, Convention for the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination CRC, Convention on the Rights of the Child CEDAW, Convention Eliminating All kinds of Discrimination Against Women
European Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities European Charter for the Protection of Regional or Minority Languages European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms European Social Charter Protocol No 3 on the Act of Accession to the European Union
Finland co-operates on a national basis and as a Member State of the European Union with the following international organisations in minority issues: the United Nations, Council of Europe, Council of the Baltic Sea States, OSCE, ILO, UNESCO.

Source:      databank FINLEX http://www.finlex.fi/en/

Finland/ 5.3 Sector specific legislation

5.3.1 Visual and applied arts

Finnish legislation on the arts and artists covers on the one hand public support and artists' rights on an individual level and, on the other hand, public support to the cultural and art institutions. The latter will be discussed in greater detail in chapter 7.2.

The following Table contains information on the main legislation for the arts and individual artists. It indicates that this legislation pertains mainly to financial support, that is, the systems of artists' grants and pensions and support to projects and to the enhancement of creative environments. See also chapter 8.1.1 to 8.1.3.

Table 7:     Promoting the arts, artists and creativity

LEGISLATION	COMMENTS
Act on Art Professors' and Artists' State-Grants Act (734/1969, amended 143/1995, 367/2000, 666/2002, 196/2005)	Provides the legislative basis for the artists' grants system; amendment 143/1995 abolished the 15-year grants and made the system more purposeful
Act on Grants and Subsidies for Authors and Translators (236/1961, amended 1080/83, 1067/1993, 1272/1994, 1358/1995, 1040/1996249/ 2002, 665/2002)	Provides grants to authors and translators to compensate the library use of their works
Act on Some Specific Grants for Visual Artists (115/1997, amended 664/2002)	Provides grants for visual artists for the public display of their works
Council of State Decision on Extraordinary Artists' Pensions ( 75/1974)	Provides additional pensions for senior artists and finances their artistic work
Act on State Guarantees for Art Exhibitions (411/1986, amended 639/1991, 336/1994, 390/1997, 1116/2001))	Guarantees insurance for the organiser of art exhibitions
Act on the Pensions of Artists and Some Particular Groups of Short-Time Workers (662/1985, amended frequently).	Safeguards the pension payments and pension rights in short-term employment contracts that are typical for musicians, performing artists, journalists, set-designers, etc.

Source:      databank FINLEX http://www.finlex.fi/en/

Finland/ 5.3 Sector specific legislation

5.3.2 Performing arts and music

Legislation for performing artists is the same as the general legislation covering individual artists presented in Table 7 in chapter 5.3.1, see also chapter 7.2.

Finland/ 5.3 Sector specific legislation

5.3.3 Cultural heritage

Policies for the preservation and presentation of cultural heritage consist of the following elements: protection of monuments and historically significant buildings, archaeological and cultural sites, preservation and presentation of cultural heritage items in museums, and the protection of cultural sites and built environment through physical and construction planning (zoning). In all these activities, the National Board of Antiquities has a central role together with the Ministry of Environment; physical planning (zoning) is the responsibility of the regional councils and municipalities.

Table 8:     Main legislation on cultural heritage

LEGISLATION	COMMENTS
Museums Act (729/1992, amended 1459/1995, 1166/1996, 1076/2005)	Provides the basis for the recognition of professional museums and guarantees them steady public support
Act on Archaeological Sites (295/1963, amended 68/1995, 563/1995, 702/1995, 798/1996)	Provides legislative basis for protection of sites and for the right to archaeological excavations
Archives Act ( 831/1994, amended 689/1999, 163/2004 )	Provides legislative basis for the National Archive system and for the principles for deposition of relevant archive materials in and support for public and private archives
Act on Film Archiving (576/1984)	Provides legislative basis and principles for archiving film material
Physical Planning and Construction Act (132/1999)	Provides the legislative basis for physical planning and protection of built environment
Protection of Buildings Act (60/1985, amended 1152/1993)	Provides a legislative basis for the protection of historically significant buildings
Act on Restricting Export of Objects of Cultural Value (previously 445/1978, now 115/1999)	Takes into consideration the Council Regulation (EEC) 3911/1992
Act on the Administration of the Site of Suomenlinna Fortress (1145/1988)	Provides the legislative basis for the administration of a fortress site that belongs to the UNESCO World Heritage List

Source:      databank FINLEX http://www.finlex.fi/en/

Finland/ 5.3 Sector specific legislation

5.3.4 Literature and libraries

Public lending right compensations are covered by a special grant system under the Act on Grants and Subsidies for Authors and Translators (1961, latest amendment 2002). There is a special board for peer group evaluation and the system is now administratively integrated into the Arts Council of Finland. In 2000, 2 million euros were distributed in the form of grants to fiction writers and translators.

The Public Library Act was originally passed in 1986 (latest amendment in 1998). It provides the legislative basis defining the tasks of public municipal libraries eligible for central government subsidies according to the Financing Law. The Public Library Decree (1998) specifies this Act. Legislation on archives is presented in Table 8, chapter 5.3.3.

For more detailed information see Table 7 in chapter 5.3.1 and Table 14 in chapter 7.2.

Finland/ 5.3 Sector specific legislation

5.3.5 Architecture and environment

Architecture is considered to be an art form and architects as artists. Therefore, public support of architecture and architects on an individual level is outlined in legislation presented in Table 7 in chapter 5.3.1 for individual artists.

The Protection of Buildings Act (60/1985, amended 1152/1993) protects buildings, built areas and built cultural environments, which have value from the perspective of cultural history. This protection pertains to buildings in zoned areas. The Land Use and Building Act (132/1999) defines the zoning system (where municipalities have the zoning monopoly) and thus the "ex ante protection" of built environments. Archaeological sites and monuments and church buildings are protected by the Act on Archaeological Sites and Monuments (295/1963) and the Church Act (635/1964) respectively.

Finland/ 5.3 Sector specific legislation

5.3.6 Film, video and photography

Legislation pertains mainly to the production of feature and documentary films, to television and radio activities and the censorship of films and videos (and, currently also to computer and console games).

Support for national production of feature films is channelled via the Finnish Film Foundation. The Act and Decree on Film Production (2000) defines the organisation of financial support channelled via the Foundation and also other forms of support for the promotion of film production and distribution. The Acts on Radio and Television, on the Finnish Broadcasting Company and on the State Television and Radio Fund are all important from the point of view of the "markets" for national feature film and independent television programme producers. The Finnish censorship system for films, videos and games is considered both flexible and effective in its present form.

Table 9:     Legislation on film, radio, television

LEGISLATION	COMMENTS
Film Art Promotion Act (28/2000)	This act was needed to provide a legal basis for the functioning of the Finnish Film Institute
Decree on the Promotion of Film Art (121/2000)	Specifies the previous act
Act on Radio and Television Activities (744/1998, amendments 490/2002, 394/2003, 1190/2005)	Defines the prerequisites for the broadcasting operations and their licensing by public authorities
Act on the Finnish Broadcasting Company (FBC, 1380/1993, amended 746/1998)	Defines the role of the FBC as a public service radio and television company and defines the mode of its (parliamentary) control
Act on the State Television and Radio Fund (745/1998)	Defines the organising the collection and the mode of use of radio and television licence fees
Act on the Classification of Audiovisual Programmes (775/2000) and the Board of Film Classification (776/2000)	Act on the Classification of Audiovisual Programmes (775/2000) and the Board of Film Classification (776/2000)

Source:      databank FINLEX http://www.finlex.fi/en/

Finland/ 5.3 Sector specific legislation

5.3.7 Culture industries

There are only few laws that pertain directly to the culture industries. They pertain to film production and radio and television (see chapter 5.3.6). There is also legislation on content, that is, on age classifications of audiovisual products for the purpose of preventing children from being exposed to the exhibition of pornography, violence, horror or "...other contents that may have a detrimental effect on their development". On the other hand, there is extensive legislation on freedom of expression, libelling and protection of privacy.

VAT legislation, which (congruent to the respective EU directives) allows levies at a lower tax rate (8% instead of 22%) on cultural goods and services. An Income Tax Law allows tax relief on donations to a number of socially significant associations and foundations (charities).

Legislation guarding free competition has obviously had some preventive effects also in the culture industries as to the formation of price-setting monopolies and cartels. The Finnish agency responsible for the implementation of this legislation (Finnish Competition Authority) undertook an investigation (1998-1999) into a major fusion of the leading Finnish media company with a major publishing house and a company of kiosks distributing books and journals. In some other EU countries, the EU directives that aim at preventing competition restrictions have jeopardised the prevailing systems of setting fixed book prices by publishers and, therefore, these systems have been interpreted as a cartel-based restriction of competition. The fixed book price system was abolished in Finland in 1972.

The Finnish Film Foundation, which is the main public agency responsible for the support of cinema, had no legislative basis previously besides the Foundation Act that stipulates for the founding, organisation and administration of public and private foundations. In the re-codification of the Finnish Constitution (1999), special attention was paid to the importance of not delegating public powers to private organisations without affirmation by an enacted law. This led to the need to prepare and pass the Film Art Promotion Act in 2000. Basically, the new law has not altered the modus operandi of the Film Foundation.

Finland/ 5.3 Sector specific legislation

5.3.8 Mass media

See Table 9 in chapter 5.3.6 for the main broadcasting legislation.

TV programme quotas are set out in the 1998 Act on Radio and Television Activities and adhere to the stipulations of the EU Directive "Television Without Frontiers". The Finnish legislation follows Articles 4.1 of the Directive that presupposes the transmission of European programmes on TV-channels for ... a majority proportion of their transmission time, excluding the time appointed to news, sports events, games, advertising and teletext services". Following the stipulations of Article 5 of the Directive, the Finnish Act on Radio and Television Activities set a quota of 15% for programmes by independent producers, with a clause that these programmes must have been produced during the last five years.

Finland/ 5.3 Sector specific legislation

5.3.9 Legislation for self-employed artists

The main legal framework pertaining to the direct support to the arts and artists and its organisation is based on the Act on the Organisation of Promotion of the Arts and Art Professors and State Artists' Grants Act (see also chapter 8.1.1). In addition, the Act on State Guarantees for Art Exhibitions provides indirect support measures that facilitate the dissemination of creative work.

The framework for artists aims at overcoming economic and social handicaps due to the atypical nature of artistic work. A major issue is income and company taxation. Attempts have been made to improve the tax treatment of grant and copyright income and to introduce the right to income averaging (including tax deductible costs) over several years.

See also chapter 5.1.4.

For more information, see our Status of Artists section. 

Finland/ 5.3 Sector specific legislation

5.3.10 Other areas of relevant legislation

The importance of the legislation on prevention of unfair competition has proved to be important from the point of view of providing a level playing field for small and medium sized enterprises and for guaranteeing entry to the market for new companies and new ideas / works of art as basis of cultural production.

Finland/ 6. Financing of culture

6.1 Short overview

The major role in financing the arts and culture in Finland is played by the central government and the municipalities. The main fields financed predominantly by the state and the municipalities are artistic creation (support to the arts and artists), cultural and art institutions (including those of the performing arts), and maintenance of cultural heritage, general arts education and professional education in the arts and culture. The main forms of financing are direct budget financing, transfers (directly or via other public authorities to the recipients) and some forms of tax expenditure. The direct financing of culture industries (apart from cinema) is rather insignificant.

In practice, the central government and municipalities are the sole public financiers; in addition the Finnish Broadcasting Company and the copyright organisations - if the collective use of copyright compensations can be considered "public". There is no independent regional administration which would provide direct public funding although regional arts councils, foundations and regional councils play an intermediary role between the municipal governance, central government and EU financing.

Using the definition of culture which was applied by the EUROSTAT pilot survey of financing and expenditure on culture and referring to the figures presented in chapter 6.3, the share of the central government financing is 58.3%. If we use the traditional narrow definition, leaving out archives, scientific libraries and education, the expenditure (the net current expenditure) is divided fifty-fifty between the two levels of government. According to statistics from 2001, the total capital investments and transfers of the central government were only 18.1 million euros and those of local (municipal) government 85.5 million euros. The fact that central government property management has been recently re-organised to be managed under the auspices of a public corporation makes it, for the time being, difficult to assess the actual central government capital investment in the arts and culture. Using the broader definition and including the above (assumedly too low) figures of capital investment, the share of cultural expenditure (net) on culture was about 3% of the total state budget in 2001 and 1.4-1.5% of the total public expenditure (central government and municipalities, pension funds excluded).

The figures below highlight two recent trends in public funding of the arts and culture. Since 2001 the financing by the central government has substantially increased and the share of finance from the state monopoly on lotto, lottery and sports betting has also substantially decreased.

Table 10:   Finnish central government financing channeled through the Ministry of Education and Culture to the arts and culture, in million euros, 2001-2007

Year	2001	2002	2003	2004	2005	2006	2007
Financing	292.6	302.3	315.5	331.4	351.9	368.4	391.3

Source:      Statistics Finland, Kulttuuritilastot / Cultural Statistics 2005, 224, 227                   http://www.minedu.fi/OPM/Linjaukset_ja_rahoitus/?lang=en

Table 11:   Share of central government financing (Table 10) by the profits from Veikkaus Ltd*

Year	2001	2002	2003	2004	2005	2006	2007
Financing	204.5	179.7	191.2	188.1	185.3	190.4	188.9
Share	69.9	59.4	60.4	56.8	52.7	51.7	48.3

Source:      Statistics Finland, Kulttuuritilastot / Cultural Statistics 2005, 224, 227                   http://www.minedu.fi/OPM/Linjaukset_ja_rahoitus/?lang=en
*                 The government company operating the monopoly for lotto, lottery and sports betting.

Despite the recent growth, the level of central government financing exceeded the pre-1991-1993 recession level for the first time only in 2006. This trend seems to continue in 2007 and 2008, because recent revisions of the legislation on state transfers to municipalities stipulate that inflation compensation will be carried out in 2008 and, hence, more regularly and without ad hoc changes. The share financed by the profits of Veikkaus Ltd has declined, because the new legislation stipulates that the central government subsidies to public municipal libraries will be gradually paid from the regular budget (tax payers' money). However, fears have been expressed that the new increases will be taken from Veikkaus profits, which would increase the dependence of the arts and culture on the interest of the people to gamble and the gamblers' loyalty to the games of national monopoly companies.

The financing by municipalities reached 1992 levels in 2001, but has levelled-off since then because of the worsening economic conditions of most of the Finnish municipalities. There are plans to reform the structure of the Finnish system of municipal administration by better targeted and more efficiently organised services and by merges of small municipalities. If carried out, these reforms will scarcely improve the economic position of cultural service systems.

There is no exact measure of household spending on art and culture. The household surveys on cultural spending include items such as newspapers and journals, TV-licence fees, PC-equipment, programmes, games, schoolbooks, encyclopaedias, and photography services. If we take all these items to measure cultural consumption, its share in the total household spending is about 1.6-1.8%. If we take into account only traditional cultural items, that is paintings, works of design, cinema, theatre and orchestra tickets, tickets to exhibitions and museums and purchases of records and fiction books, the share of this consumption of the total household spending is about 0.4%.

Finland/ 6. Financing of culture

6.2 Public cultural expenditure per capita

According to a broader (EUROSTAT) definition of culture, the annual public cultural expenditure for current net costs, without media and professional education, was 143.60 euros in 2001 and 167.7 euros in 2005. The ratio of the expenditure to the GDP was 0.54% in 2001 and 0.56% in 2005. The growth in 2001-2005 was approximately 18.3%; considerably higher in the case of the central government (22%) than in municipalities (about 18%). The overall structure (transfers / direct expenditure) of the state expenditure has remained mainly unchanged.

Finland/ 6. Financing of culture

6.3 Public cultural expenditure broken down by level of government

Table 12:   Public cultural expenditure, by level of government, in million euro, 2001 and 2005

Level of government	Expenditure	% of total	Expenditure	% of total
Year	2001		2005
Central government total: - direct expenditure - transfers to municipalities - direct transfers to non-profit art institutions and cultural  organisations	419.2 181.3 117.9 120.0	56.3 24.3 15.8 16.2	504.0 222.1 121.1 160.8	57.2 25.2 13.7 18.3
Municipalities      -all direct expenditures & transfers	325.8	43.7	377.2	42.8
Total public expenditure	745.0	100.0	881.2	100.0

Source:      The 201 Finnish data were compiled for the EUROSTAT survey, 2004, the 2005 data has been extrapolated from data presented in "Culture by Regions" of Statistics Finland, 2007.

Finland/ 6. Financing of culture

6.4 Sector breakdown

Table 13 below provides statistics on the distribution of expenditure by sectors (domains and sub-domains) of cultural activities in 2001. There is no more recent data for detailed distribution by sectors. The data pertains only to current expenditure (net). The heritage sector includes art museums and the figures on education include only the higher (university level) education in the arts.

The figures reflect the overall dominance of two sectors: libraries and performing arts. This is understandable both historically and economically. In addition opera and classical music have been the flagships of Finnish culture abroad; they are also the most "labour intensive" sectors that are supported by the central and local governments.

The category of socio-cultural activity includes the cultural expenditure used by the municipalities for cultural administration and to support non-institutional cultural activities and productions. Municipalities receive central government transfers for maintaining this sub-sector.

Table 13:   State cultural expenditure, by sector, in euros, 2001

DOMAINS	Current public expenditure		Central govt direct expenditure	Central govt transfers to municipalities	Central govt other transfers	Local govern. all current expenditure
	%	Total	Total	Total	Total	Total
CULTURAL HERITAGE	15.2	113 564 329	35 354 551	12 238 000	17 132 778	48 839 000
Historical monuments and archaeological sites
		11 917 676	11 917 676
Museums (historical & art)		101 646 653	23 436 875	12 238 000	17 132 778	48 839 000
Others
ARCHIVES	1.7	12 188 516	12 188 516
LIBRARIES	30.53	226 895 533	16 633 774	81 000 000	3 363 759	125 898 000
Public		214 695 533	4 433 774	81 000 000	3 363 759	125 898 000
National library functions		12 200 000	12 200 000
ARCHITECTURE	0.1	1 011 716	513 375		498 341
VISUAL ARTS	5.5	40 749 871	35 991 835		4 758 036
Visual arts		5 639 928	4 079 144		1 560 784
Design		3 795 210	959 562		2 835 648
Photography		979 497	617 893		361 604
Multidisciplinary		237 951	237 951
Education		24 842 000	24 842 000
Non-allocable		5 255 285	5 255 285
PERFORMING ARTS	30.0	223 685 778	55 523 060	17 961 000	69 017 718	81 157 000
Music		55 066 949	17 168 414	9 321 000	2 035 535	26 482 000
Dance		3 255 233	940 269		1 699 964	615 000
Music theatre, opera		37 800 840			35 936 840	3 864 000
Theatre		88 715 986	1 473 339	8 640 000	28 406 647	50 196 000
Multidisciplinary
Other arts		938 732			938 732
Non-allocable		5 795 038	5 795 038
Education		30 146 000	30 146 000
BOOKS AND PRESS	3.0	22 368 491	8 047 536		14 320 955
Books		6 198 943	4 497 988		1 700 955
Press		13 380 000	760 000		12 620 000
Not allocable		2 789 548	2 789 548
AUDIOVISUAL & MULTIMEDIA	2.0	14 987 775	4 055 560		10 932 215
Cinema		14 987 775	4 055 560		10 932 215
Radio
Television
Video
Sound recordings
Multimedia
INTERDISCIPLINARY	7.4	55 359 228	12 900 474	6 718 754		35 470 000
Socio-cultural activities		42 458 754		6 718 754		35 740 000
Cultural relations abroad		6 432 946	6 432 946
International institutions		3 676 108	3 676 108
Administration		2 791 420	2 791 420
NOT ALLOCABLE BY DOMAIN	4.6	34 210 570	98 570			34 112 000
Not allocable		34 210 570	98 570			34 112 000
TOTAL	100.00	745 0001 807	181 314 251	117 917 754	120 023 802	325 746 000

Source:      Finnish data compiled for the EUROSTAT survey, 2004.

Table 13 also demonstrates that the culture industries are only marginally supported by the central government - and even less so by the municipalities. The only sub-sector that receives more substantial public support is film production. Public broadcasting is not included in these statistics. The public service television and radio of the Finnish Broadcasting Company (YLE) is financed by licence fees; which make up about 90% of the total turnover (383.5 million euros in 2006). In addition to producing and purchasing cultural programmes, the YLE finances the Radio Symphony Orchestra, is co-financier and co-producer in feature film production and pays considerable copyright and neighbouring rights compensation to copyright organisations. All these expenditures amount to about 18% of the total turnover.

For the public financing of the arts and artists, see Table 15 in chapter 8.1.1.

Finland/ 7. Cultural institutions and new partnerships

7.1 Re-allocation of public responsibilities

The division of financial responsibilities between the two main financiers, that is the state and the municipalities, is clear. The state takes care of the national cultural institutions, including university level arts education; and it supports also the culture industries, mainly cinema. It also provides financial transfers to municipalities for levelling disparities in the provision of arts and cultural services (including professional education for cultural professions and an extensive system of basic arts education) throughout the country, through the statutory system of state subsidies. The state also bears the main responsibility for the central national infrastructure: construction and renovation of nationally significant buildings, maintenance of the main information and communication systems; and it also subsidises construction and communication costs of the national networks of cultural service institutions.

Municipalities maintain the basic cultural services and their infrastructure. Minimum services can be found in small rural municipalities where they consist of public libraries and support for some socio-cultural events and activities; the maximum service system can be found in the Helsinki Metropolitan Region consisting of the City of Helsinki and three other municipalities. Between these two extremes, other cities can be divided into three categories: major cities, regional centres and small towns. In this classification, the presence / absence of a university and other institutions of higher education and culture make a clear difference. Universities and institutions of higher education guarantee sufficient interested audiences for the arts and culture. Economically the worst off are the regional (province centres) that must maintain reasonable provision of arts and cultural services but have small and fragmented audiences and pay relatively higher costs for maintaining this provision. There are some indications that the systems of regional institutions - libraries, historical museums and arts museums - assigned with a special regional role and given additional subsidies have problems in fulfilling this role effectively.

In more general terms, it has been argued that the state has, in recent years - at least until 2006 - retracted from more active support and levelling policies and forced the municipalities to carry a heavier financial burden. The municipalities in turn expect that the cultural institutions increase their own earned income and box office earnings. The recent reform of the statutory system of central government subsidies will, however, improve this situation at least to a certain extent. In this reform, the state has promised to compensate for the lag it has allowed to emerge in the statutory transfers and has also committed not to deviate any more from the statutory norms.

Finland/ 7. Cultural institutions and new partnerships

7.2 Status/role and development of major cultural institutions

In order to understand the nature and functioning of the Finnish cultural and art institutions, we must return to the legislation.

Table 14:   Current legislation pertaining to cultural and art institutions in Finland

CULTURAL POLICY LEGISLATION ON INSTITUTIONS	COMMENTS
FINANCING CULTURAL AND ART INSTITUTIONS AND CULTURAL SERVICES
Act on Financing Education and Culture (originally 705/1992; now 642/1998, amended 1186/1999, 1075/2005)	Specific "financing law" defining the rules for calculating and allocating central government subsidies to e.g. professional theatres, museums, orchestras and general arts education
Act on State Subsidies to Municipalities (688/1992, amended 1313/1993 1147/1996, 1102/1997, 1061/1998, 1126/1998, 1075/2005))	General financing law defining the rules for calculating and allocating the transfer of state subsidies to municipalities
Lottery Act (1047/2001)	The revision of old legislation; gives the government the right to contract a monopoly for 1) lottery / lotto, football pools and betting, 2) slot-machines and casinos, and 3) harness race betting to their organisers; orders the return of the profits to the state budget and earmarks their use for specific purposes
Act Regulating the Use of the Profits of Lottery / Lotto, Football Pools and Betting (1054/2001)	Defines the shares of the annual returns of lottery / lotto, football pools and betting as follows: 25% to sports, 5% to youth policy measures, 17.5% for scientific research and 35% to the arts
Government Decree on Organising Lotteries (1345/2001)	Specifies the technical rules for all forms of lotteries
PROFESSIONAL CULTURAL AND ART INSTITUTIONS AND MUNICIPAL CULTURAL SERVICES
Act on National Board of Antiquities (282/2004, original 31/1972, amended 1016/1987, 1080/2001)	Confirmed the legislative basis for the main expert and policy implementing body on heritage
Decree on National Board of Antiquities (417/2004)	Specified the Act on the Board of antiquities e.g. in respect of the status of the National Museum
National Art Museum Act (566/2000, amended 504/2004, previous act 185/1990)	Provides an umbrella organisation for three state-owned art museums (those of domestic, foreign and contemporary art)
Finnish Film Archive Act (891/1978, amended 590/1989)	Organises the administration of film archiving
Act on the Library for the Visually Impaired (11/78, 638/1996, amended 835/1998)	Provides national book services for the visually impaired
Previously, Act on the Inspection of Video and Other Audiovisual Programmes (697/1987), now the Act on the Classification of Audiovisual Programmes (775/2000)	Age classification of programmes for the protection of children against exhibition of pornography and violence; violations punished according to Chapter 17 of the Penal Code
Act on the Board for Film Classification (775/2000)	Specifies the role and composition of appeal and review body of the Film Classification agency
Act for Promotion of Film Art (28/2000)	Provides legal basis for the activities of the Finnish Film Foundation (founded in 1969 to support national film production and film art).
Municipal Cultural Activities Act (728/1992, amended 1681/1992)	Legislative basis for central government support to non-institutional cultural activities in municipalities
Museums Act (729/1992, amended 1959/1995, 1166/1996, 1072/2005)	Legislative basis defining professional museums eligible for central government subsidies according to the "financing law"
Theatres and Orchestras Act (730/1992, amended 1277/1994, 1460/1995, 642/1998, 1075/2005))	Legislative basis defining professional theatres and orchestras eligible for central government subsidies according to the "financing law"
(Public) Library Act (originally 235/1986; now 904/1998, amended 134/1990, 725/1992)	Legislative basis defining the tasks of public (municipal) libraries eligible for central government subsidies according to the "financing law"
(Public) Library Decree (1078/1998)	Specifies the previous act
ADULT EDUCATION
Act on Voluntary Adult Education (632/1998)	A new integrating law that defines the traditional forms of voluntary adult education and lays ground for their public support
Decree on Voluntary Adult Education (805/1998)	Specifies the previous act
ARTS EDUCATION AND TRAINING OF THE ARTISTS
Higher Education Development Act (1052/1986, amended 1207/1993 943/1996, 1279/2001)	Guarantees the stable financing of universities - including art universities (University for Arts and Design, Sibelius-Academy. Academy of Fine Arts, Theatre Academy) - and defines related performance expectations
Universities Act (645/1997 amended 1059/1998)	Integrates the structure, functioning and internal and external organisation of higher education and its units, including the arts universities (see the comment above).
Act on Basic Education in the Arts (originally 424/1992, now 633/1998, amended 518/2000)	Integrates the organisation of extracurricular art education for children and youth and lays basis for its public financing
Decree on Basic Education in the Arts (255/1995)	Specifies the previous law
Vocational Education Act (630/1998)	Legislative basis for lower vocational education, including culture (handicraft, design, audiovisual media, visual expression, dance and music
Decree on Vocational Education (811/1998)	Specifies the previous law
Act (633/1998)	Defines the objectives and organisation of polytechnic education, including higher professional / vocational education in the arts, culture, media and humanities
Polytechnics Decree (256/1995)	Specifies the previous act
Act on Pilot Programme on Postgraduate Studies in Polytechnic Institutions (645/2001)	A further step to remodel polytechnics to parallel universities degree structure

Source:      databank FINLEX http://www.finlex.fi/en/

The category financing cultural and art institutions and cultural services illustrates the vertical decentralisation and organisation of joint financing for the arts and culture - especially cultural institutions and services - by the central government and local governments (municipalities). The first law in the list, the Financing Law, provides the formulas that are used to assess the shares of municipal and central government in the financing of different institutional sectors (public libraries, professionally managed museums, professional theatres and orchestras and the organisations providing extra curricular art education). The next law only indicates how close the relationship between the central government and local self-government (municipalities) are financially: the former provides financial transfers for the latter and gives them equal opportunities in the overall provision of public services.

The category of cultural and art institutions demonstrates the legislative basis for the cultural institutions. These laws and decrees actually specify the types of professional institutions that can be included in the sphere of a financing law made up of joint central government - municipal financing. Some of the national institutions like the National Opera and the National Theatre are private organisations, a foundation and a joint stock company, respectively. They are financed on an annual contractual basis and do not have special laws like the National Art Gallery (see Table 14, second section). There is no law either for the Radio Symphony Orchestra, which is operated within the Finnish Broadcasting Company (YLE), or for the National Museum (which is still only a department of the National Board of Antiquities.

The institutions of professional education and training are administratively separated from the rest of cultural administration, because they are within the jurisdiction of the Department of Education and Science of the Ministry of Education and Culture (see chapter 2.1). These educational institutions form a hierarchical line from the secondary level of vocational education via polytechnics (N=29, with most having special programmes for the arts, arts management, media and humanities) to the art universities (N=4). This line has includes also the earlier extensive the system of music schools and conservatories and, at the lowest level, it is supported by the system of extra curricular "general" arts education and the specialised secondary schools of art.

Further important institutions can be found in the category of adult education. The different forms of adult education (civic colleges, municipal study circles, adult education centres), which all had earlier  separate legislative bases, which now have been integrated within one umbrella act.

It is difficult to pin down any general trends of development within this diverse institutional sector. There is a trend that is closely connected with the on-going processes of desetatisation and the adoption of the doctrine of New Public Management. These processes and doctrines appear for example as a system of performance contracts and the introduction of net budgeting and business accounting systems in central government and municipal accounting. There are also parallel demands that cultural and art institutions must earn more income as a ratio to their total expenditure. Recently in the public budgeting and account system the need to monitor and report the efficiency and longer term impacts of publicly financed activities have been emphasised There are no definite earned income ratio criteria, however the City of Helsinki has indicated informally that it finds it difficult to finance institutions where their earned income is less than 20% of the total expenditure.

Finland/ 7. Cultural institutions and new partnerships

7.3 Emerging partnerships or collaborations

Many of the institutions financed by the state and the municipalities are, in their legal form, private companies, foundations or associations and thus we could also speak of private-public partnerships. Even in these cases, funding based on their own earnings (sales of tickets etc.) is rather limited. The ratio of earned income varies between 10 per cent (Radio Symphony Orchestra) and 55 per cent (some private museums). Due to the high level of public subsidies, most of these institutions should be classified as "public", at least according to the criteria defined by the System of National Accounts. Multiple partnerships can be found in capital investments, especially in the construction of buildings. As a case in point we can use the Sibelius-House in Lahti, a city close to Helsinki. The main financiers of the concert hall were the City of Lahti and the state, but the role of the private investors, the wood industry enterprises, was also significant. Wood was used predominantly as the construction material and the firms wanted to open up new areas for the use of Finnish wood. The City of Lahti owns the building, but it is operated as a joint stock company. Similar partnerships have emerged also in the context of EU programmes, financed from the Structural Funds, for example the Sami museum in Lapland and a couple of regional cultural centres.

In order to understand the rather limited number and type of partnerships in financing and organising cultural and artistic activities, we must also have a brief look at the private financing.

The main source of private financing of the arts and culture in Finland is the private grant-giving foundations. It has been estimated that Finnish cultural foundations provide 50 million euros annually to the arts and culture (including heritage and the funding of research in the humanities and social sciences); out of this amount probably 15-20% is given as direct support to the arts (as prizes, grants and project financing). Some surveys on private sponsorship suggest that the annual sponsorship contribution of the main banks and companies (particularly insurance companies) to the arts and heritage are at present approximately 10 million euros. This includes also purchases of works of art to the art collections of the companies.

Two problems have given rise to some debates and also to some attempts for reforms. The first of these is a technical one: how to handle sponsorship money in the accounts of the public institutions. Is it earned income, which might reduce public support, or should it be kept outside the regular public budgeting? The former alternative seems to prevail. The second is a moral issue: if public institutions receive private sponsorship money, what rules must be set to avoid the potential economic linkages between the sponsor and the sponsored, e.g. the informally agreed duty of the latter to purchase facilities from the former over and above the regular tendering procedures. No specific legislation has been considered necessary in this respect, only some outlines for an ethical code have been provided by government working groups.

In recent years increased attention has been paid to the public-private partnerships in the culture industries. The only well-established partnerships of this type can be found in film production where a coalition of three partners, the Finnish Film Foundation (a public foundation financed through the budget of the Ministry of Education and Culture), television companies (the Finnish Broadcasting Company and commercial television companies) and AVEK, the Promotion Centre for Audiovisual Culture (financed from collective funds gathered as copyright compensation), co-operate on a tri-partite basis in financing film production. From among these partners, AVEK finances mainly experimental and documentary films and media art.

In general the copyright organisations (see chapter 5.1.7) play an important role in financing the arts and culture. Although most of the copyright compensation goes to individual artists and producers, the collective funds have been a distinct feature of the Finnish system. The financing by AVEK was already referred to; the other copyright organisations also maintain other promotion centres such as ESEK, the Finnish Performing Music Promotion Centre and LUSES, the Finnish Music Creation Promotion Centre.

There have been some attempts to encourage the formation of "creative clusters" which would encourage more effective use of artistic creativity by companies. The objective has been to foster new entrepreneurship and promote the export of Finnish cultural goods. The focus has been by and large on design and architecture, the field, where creative artistic visions and industrial interest have traditionally met each other.

For the recent efforts of the Ministry of Education and Culture to develop a network-based partnership promoting export of Finnish culture, see chapter 2.3.

Finland/ 8. Support to creativity and participation

8.1 Direct and indirect support to artists

See  chapters 8.1.1 to 8.1.3.

Finland/ 8.1 Direct and indirect support to artists

8.1.1 Special artists funds

The main legal provisions for the direct support of artistic creativity is the Act on Art Professors and State Artists' Grants. It is administered by the arts council system, which subsequently provides the following forms of direct support:

• artists' grants (from half a year grants to five-year grants; artist professorships);
• project grants;
• extraordinary artists pensions;
• grants to playwrights;
• compensation grants to visual artists;
• library compensation grants; and
• library compensation grants for musicians and composers.

In 2005 the total number of grants to be distributed was 495 grant years, distributed as 1-year, 3-year or 5-year grants or as shorter project grants. Furthermore there are grants where, upon application, the writers and artists are compensated for public use and display of their work. The artist professors (at the most eleven) have a higher annual income and they can be appointed at the most for five years. Artist grants, professorships, project grants and copyright compensation grants amounted to 11.6 million euros in 2005 (see Table 15 below). If we add to that prizes, commissions, competitions, support for travel, material costs, special productions and exhibitions, etc., the direct support to artists amounted to more than 14 million euros in 2005.

In addition some other grants and subsidies worth 3.9 million euros are channelled via the Arts Council system to experimental, multi-arts production, production centres and promotion of children's culture. As Table 15 below indicates, the total support through the arts councils amounted in to more than 19 million euros in 2005.

There is also an extraordinary artists' pension system, managed jointly by the Ministry of Finance and the Ministry of Education and Culture. It provides flat monthly payments to the recipients and, in addition to being a social security instrument, functions also as a long-term grant for senior artists still active in their creative work. When this is added to "regular support", the central government allocation to artists and their special projects amounted to almost 30 million euros in 2005.

Table 15:   Support of the Arts Council of Finland by financing schemes, in euro, 2005

Support for artistic work (artists)	11.6 million
Public lending right grants for writers & translators *	2 573 040
Public lending right grants for illustrators	50 000
Public display grants for visual artists	841 000
Public lending right grants for musicians & composers	120 000
Artist grants **	7 319 790
Artist professors	487 590
State Prizes ***	219 000
Support for artistic projects (artists / groups / collective bodies)	3.9 million
Film culture	228 000
Project grants	735 850
Ateliers and workshops for visual artists	35 000
Visual artists' publications	55 000
Exhibitions of visual arts	520 000
Children's culture	486 000
Short-term theatre projects	175 000
Travel grants	248 290
Media, circus and multidisciplinary projects	192 000
Policy programme for design	155 780
Design projects	135 000
Drama literature (premiere performances)	214 500
Policy programme for architecture	129 400
Artist in residence scheme	241 160
Dance culture	38 000
Dance productions	171 370
Production of photographic art	89 500
Publishing of photographic art	65 000
Support for collective bodies	3.9 million
Regional activities in photographic art	205 000
Regional cinema centres	400 000
Regional operas	327 000
Cinema productions	360 000
Projects of literature	60 000
Concert activities	206 000
Reading and creative writing	200 000
Music competitions	50 000
Music master classes	340 000
Orchestras (outside the statutory subsidy system)	219 910
Dance theatres / companies (outside the statutory subsidy system)	380 000
Theatres (outside the statutory subsidy system	1 010 000
Commissioning of compositions	65 000
Interaction between art and research	70 000
TOTAL	19.4 million

Source:      Valtion taidetoimikuntalaitoksen myöntämä tuki 2005 - Support granted by the Arts Councils 2005, Arts Council of Finland, Facts and Figures, 1/2006 Grants, awards, scholarships.
*                 Including non-fiction writers (257 300 euro);
**              Including long- term artist grants valid in 2005;
***            Including state prizes for merits in children's culture (24 000 euro).

Finland/ 8.1 Direct and indirect support to artists

8.1.2 Grants, awards, scholarships

Most special schemes for artists such as copyright compensation, prizes, travel bursaries, artists' residence programmes, purchase of works of art schemes etc. have been administratively integrated into the system of arts councils. Table 15 in chapter 8.1.1 gives a comprehensive overview of the whole landscape of this support. This picture can be complemented by grants from private foundations and funds and from the business sector. In the latter half of the 1990s the support from private foundations and funds increased substantially, due to the good returns from the stocks they owned. In 2002 the support of the private foundation sector to the art and artists was 16-17 million euros, and about a half of that was allocated alone by the Finnish Cultural Foundation. There is no up-to-date information on the total amount of business sponsorship, but sponsoring and purchase of works of art by major business companies currently is around 10 million euros. However, sponsoring contributions are increasingly delivered in the form of services, and direct monetary support is decreasing respectively.

Finland/ 8.1 Direct and indirect support to artists

8.1.3 Support to professional artists associations or unions

The Ministry of Education and Culture supports national art associations and cultural organisations with discretionary subsidies. The total amount of these subsidies is approximately 42-45 million euros, which covers approximately 35% of their operating costs. Furthermore, the state supports associations and organisations indirectly by subsidising events, festivals and exhibitions they organise.

Municipalities also support these associations and organisations directly from their own budgets and from the funds transferred by the state to municipalities for cultural non-institutional activities.

Some fields of professional artistic and cultural work, like actors and musicians have strong unions for collective bargaining.

Finland/ 8.2 Cultural consumption and participation

8.2.1 Trends and figures

There are at least three ways to measure and assess participation in cultural life: consumption of cultural goods and services, participation and time use surveys (how often people visit events or how much of their time they use for reading etc.), and box office figures.

Consumption figures in Finland indicate no major changes in recent year's in the aggregate annual expenditure of households on the arts and culture. The nominal rise of expenditure on selected cultural items in 1996-1998 was 6-7%, which included newspapers, journals, TV licences, PC-instruments, programmes and games. The increases were most prominent in PC-related activities, records and CD-ROMs and in the purchase of tickets to concerts.

Some participation data is provided by the following two Tables, based on the sample-based survey of leisure-time activities of Finns. Unfortunately, the time series stops at 2002.

Table 16:   Cultural participation for cinema, arts and heritage, in 1981, 1991, 2002

Years	1981	1991	2002	1991	1981	2002	1981	1991	2002
Cultural participation by gender	T %	T %	T %	M %	M %	M %	W %	W %	W %
Cinema: visited during the last six months	41	35	37	35	44	37	38	35	37
Concerts: visited during the last 12 months	35	34	40	27	29	35	40	39	44
Theatre: visited during the last 12 months	45	37	36	28	36	27	52	46	44
Opera: visited during the last 12 months	6	4	6	3	4	5	8	6	8
Dance performances: visited during the last 12 months	25	18	22	14	19	16	31	22	27
Music, dance or theatre events: visited during the last 12 months	23	26	28	23	20	26	26	29	30
Art museums / exhibitions: visited during the last 12 months	37	44	42	38	29	37	43	50	47
Museums: visited during the last 12 months	43	43	33	42	41	33	45	44	33
Historical monuments / sites: visited during the last 12 months	.	.	50	.	.	50	.	.	50
Archaeological sites: visited during the last 12 months.	.	.	16	.	.	18	.	.	14

Source:      Statistics Finland, Statistics on leisure time activities, http://www.stat.fi/til/vpa/tau

Table 17:   Cultural participation: using the media; reading, in 1981, 1991, 2001

Years	1981	1991	2002	1981	1991	2002	1981	1991	2002
Use of the media / reading by gender	T %	T %	T %	M %	M %	M %	W %	W %	W %
Television: watches daily	59	72	77	63	75	78	55	69	76
Video films, programmes: watches at least once weekly	.	35	31	.	40	33	.	29	30
DV D: films, programme: watches at least once weekly	.	.	6	.	.	9	.	.	4
Radio: listens daily	79	71	71	79	73	73	79	69	68
Music: listens daily		67	69		67	73		66	66
Phonograms: regular listening	87	82	75	90	83	73	85	80	77
Newspaper: reads at least one, habitually	96	96	87	97	94	88	96	96	87
Reads morning or afternoon papers daily	.	82	76	.	84	79	.	80	74
Journal / magazines: reads at least once a week	63	62	52	63	60	51	62	63	53
Reading books: during the last six months	76	75	70	74	70	63	78	80	77
Reading books: during the last 12 months		82	78		79	72		85	84
Visited library: during the last six months	53	59	60	50	55	55	56	62	67

Source:      Statistics Finland, Statistics on leisure time activities, http://www.stat.fi/til/vpa/tau

The Tables indicate that participation has remained fairly stable during the monitored 12 year period. There is some decline in reading books, listening to the radio and visiting museums; and increases in going to concerts (which includes pop concerts), visiting art museums and exhibitions and libraries. The increase in library visits reflects, probably, the aspirations of public libraries of becoming information and leisure centres by providing Internet links and broadening the scope of borrowed materials to include recorded music and video films.

The same survey also provided data on amateur activities. All individual artistic and cultural activities (such as playing an instrument, singing, painting) have remained stable; there has, however, been a substantial drop in the reading of books, especially among younger generations in the period 1991-1999. This trend has continued in 1999-2002, although it seems that young people are presently reading more selectively (1-5 books a month) than they did in the 1990s.

Finnish participation indicators seem to suggest a relatively stable situation; there are, however, indications that the situation might be in a gradual transition. The impact of the Internet (especially console and PC games) and cellular phone services has not yet altered the basic activity structure. The downward trend in the traditionally high level of reading books and journals might, however, be one of the first victims of the ongoing transformations

There are also pressures on cultural institutions to generate more earned income. Box office receipts increased the income of theatres and orchestras, but less so in the case of opera and museums. The aggregate figures do not say much about the successes of individual institutions. Yet, there are some indications that big theatre companies that can invest in musicals and other popular productions for their main stages and use their smaller stages for other productions (experimental drama, children's plays etc.) have increased their audience figures.

The following four Tables provide information on box office success of professional theatres, orchestras and museum and cinemas in terms of number and type of the supplying organisations and number of visitors / audiences. Theatres and symphony orchestras display a stagnant development pattern, museums an expansive pattern and cinema a pattern of recent revival based on increased popularity of domestic films. The data on theatres, orchestras and museums pertain only to institutions that have been financed within the statutory subsidy system or financing contracts.  The picture might be different, if all institutions were included.

Table 18:   Performances and ticket sales of the main professional theatres (excluding the National Theatre and the National Opera) in 1990, 1995, 2000 and 2005

Year	Number of theatres	Performances by the own ensemble	Tickets sold in thousands
1990	48	11 611	2 049
1995	53	12 065	2 148
2000	49	11 971	2 207
2005	48	11 591	2 125

Source:      Statistics Finland, Kulttuuritilastot / Cultural Statistics 2005, 108.

Tickets sold per capita in 2005: 0.40

Table 19:   Museums (administrative units*) and visitors in 1990, 1995, 2000 and 2004

Year	Museums	Visitors
1990	127	3 720 000
1995	134	3 994 000
2000	155	4 881 000
2004	163	4 778 000

Source:      Statistics Finland, Kulttuuritilastot / Cultural Statistics 2005, 63.
*                 One unit can administer several sites.

Tickets sold per capita in 2005: 0.91

Table 20:   Major symphony orchestras: concerts and audience in 1990, 1995, 2000 and 2005

Year	Number of orchestras	Symphony concerts and other performances*
		Number of performances	Audiences; persons
1990*	32	1 775	740 418
1995	30	1 966	991 478
2000	29	1 788	993 837
2005	31	1 918	992 387

Source:      Statistics Finland, Kulttuuritilastot / Cultural Statistics 2005, 133.
*                 The performances of the National Opera are included in the statistics since 1993.

Tickets sold per capita in 2005: 0.19

Table 21:   Cinemas and their audiences in 1990, 1995, 2000 and 2004

	1990	1995	2000	2004
Number of cinemas	264	241	228	219
Films shown	762	479	409	396
Premieres	172	147	170	189
Finnish feature films released	14	8	9	13
Cinema admissions, millions	6.2	5,3	7.1	6.9
Admissions per inhabitant	1.3	1.0	1.4	1.3
Share (%) of domestic film viewers	13.9	10.5	14.9	17.0
Box office receipts, in million euro	30.6	32.6	46.6	51.8
Average ticket price in euro	4.9	6.1	6.6	7.3

Source:      Statistics Finland, Kulttuuritilastot / Cultural Statistics 2005, 161.

Tickets sold per capita in 2005: 1.31

Table 22:   Book sales by genre in 1994, 2001 and 2005, in million euros

Genre	1994	2001	2005
Fiction	31	37	39
Children's and books for young people	25	41	43
Encyclopaedias, large volume reference books	25	15	20
Other non-fiction	79	90	92
Textbooks for comprehensive schools	30	43	51
Textbooks for upper secondary schools, vocational schools etc.	26	35	38
Total	216	261	283

Source:      The Finnish Book Publishers' Association, http://www.skyry.net/y_english.htm

Sales of fiction and children books / books for young people, per capita in 2005: 15.5 euro

Table 22 provides information on book sales by genre. From a longer perspective, children's books / books for young people, non-fiction and textbooks have kept book publishing profitable; the sales of fiction have been fairly stagnant since 2000, with only some minor fluctuations.

Finland/ 8.2 Cultural consumption and participation

8.2.2 Policies and programmes

In recent years many cultural institutions have introduced audience education programmes and have increased co-operation between schools, cultural institutions and artists. Some examples are the audience education programme of the National Opera and the composer- in - residence programmes of the Finnish Symphony Orchestras.

The extra curricular general arts education system is, however, the vantage point that provides the basis both for the continued professional training of artists and the creation of competent, interested audiences.

The opportunities created for children to participate in cultural life - production of children's books, their provision in public libraries, children's theatre, participation possibilities in visual arts and dance courses at cultural centres - is quite extensive, at least in the cities.

There have been recent attempts to integrate different arts development and arts education programmes into creativity and cultural education programmes that focus on the whole life span of a person from the nursery and primary school to adult and working life and to retirement.

Finland/ 8.3 Arts and cultural education

8.3.1 Arts education

The institutions of professional education and training are administratively separated from the rest of cultural and arts administration, because they are within the jurisdiction of the Department of Education and Science of the Ministry of Education and Culture (see chapter 2.1). These educational institutions form a hierarchical line from the secondary level of vocational education via polytechnics (N=29), with most having special programmes for the arts, arts management, media and humanities to the art universities (N=4). This line includes, also, the earlier extensive system of music schools and conservatories and, at the lowest level, it is supported by the system of extra curricular "general" arts education and secondary schools with special art oriented curricula. Furthermore, the graduates of the faculties of humanities are often employed e.g. by the publishing houses and cultural associations and foundations. In 2001-2005, some 500 Bachelor or Master's level graduates graduated annually from these universities and the number of graduates from the cultural and media programmes of the polytechnics has escalated from 420 in 1999 to 1 700 in 2004.

The Finnish art universities have adapted well to the grade and credit systems pre-supposed by the Bologna process. In the polytechnics, where many professional degrees correspond to the bachelor-level university degree, there is now interest to introduce new higher level programmes and degrees.

The art schools, polytechnics and art universities have been criticised for admitting too many students to their study programmes. On the other hand, the present education policies do not set qualitative performance requirements to educational institutions. Instead, most of the public financing to the universities and other institutes of higher education is based on the number of students and graduates.

The debates on general arts education were brought to an end by the 1992 Act on Basic Arts Education that obliged the municipalities to organise extracurricular arts education, that is, extensive supply of art courses outside the regular school curricula. The Act also stipulated statutory state subsidies to municipalities and private institutions for this purpose. The lion's share of public funding for the new system of basic arts education has gone, however, to music schools.

During the 1990s some cultural and art institutions have started to develop experimental arts education programmes of their own. Good examples are the educational programmes of the National Art Gallery and the National Opera designed for school children.

Finland/ 8.3 Arts and cultural education

8.3.2 Intercultural education

There are no standard programmes for intercultural education in the curricula of the main Finnish education system. In practice, "internationalisation" means student exchange or transversal introduction of special international themes, courses and teaching material to regular study programmes. University education in general and in the social sciences and humanities (including art universities) in particular is unavoidably international both in terms of content and international contacts. Also, the business schools on all levels and public and private schools alike organise special courses on learning about foreign cultures as part and parcel of modern global business strategies. Art schools, universities and cultural programmes of the polytechnics are in the forefront of development on all these fronts.

In the educational system as a whole, there are courses and campaigns to combat ethnic discrimination which covers most educational institutions. The National Board of Education has been active in planning, providing teaching material and in the follow-up of these activities.

Finland has a network of cultural workshops for young people and some of these have taken internationalism transversally into their activity programmes. Multiculturalism is also promoted by the Finnish Film Archive and the network of Finnish Film Clubs. The role of the Finnish Broadcasting company is illustrated in the Finnish case study on "Basaari" and related training of immigrant and minority groups for media professions.

For more information, see our Intercultural Dialogue section. 

Finland/ 8.4 Amateur arts, cultural associations and community centres

8.4.1 Amateur arts

There are two and a half thousand art (including associations of artists) associations, some seven hundred heritage and museum associations and about a thousand associations for the promotion of culture. It is difficult to assess which share of this total organisational nexus focuses solely or partly on amateur arts or related cultural activities.

Yet the associations of amateur art and clubs of "art enthusiasts" (like film clubs, local and regional associations for the promotion of visual arts) have played a central role in the development of Finnish cultural life at the national, regional and local levels. The most popular fields of amateur arts are theatre and music (especially choir singing). The line between professional and amateur art is diffuse. In 2004, there were 1 424 choirs with 45 253 members, the best choirs perform to a high professional level. In 2005, there were 224 "folk artists" or "ITE-artists" (self-trained artists) with varying artistic occupations and professional practices. About two per cent of those who are 15 years or older belong to a theatre club or an amateur theatre; the two main umbrella associations of amateur theatres have 750 amateur theatre members. The associations of amateur art and art enthusiasts organise a great number of events, exhibitions and festivals annually that involve thousands of voluntary workers and receive subsidies from the Ministry of Education and Culture, from cities / municipalities, from regional art councils, foundations and funds (particularly from the Regional Funds of the Finnish Cultural Fund).

Finland/ 8.4 Amateur arts, cultural associations and community centres

8.4.2 Cultural houses and community cultural clubs

According to recent statistics, in 2006, there were more than 2 000 traditional (mainly rural) "club-houses" and more than 93 major cultural houses. The former were originally local arenas for political, educational and cultural mass organisations and they are still meeting places for village and communal activities. Some of the latter were constructed for the use of national cultural, political or educational associations, but at present most of them are owned by cities and offer premises for citizen's various artistic and cultural activities. There is also a national network of congress and concert centres that operate more or less on a commercial basis. However, at the same time, they also provide venues for publicly subsidised companies, especially symphony orchestras at a reduced price.

Much of the more modern "club-type" activities are carried out and financed within the publicly supported system of adult education; but there is also an emerging new "third sector" which operates in small networks of voluntary organisations and small business firms in the different fields of new media, media arts and new ICT / Internet applications. The restaurant and entertainment sectors maintain, increasingly, club-type organisations for their core customers.

In three main cities (Helsinki, Tampere and Turku), there are cultural centres which function as carrefours for the immigrants and minority groups. At the initiative of the Ministry of Education and Culture, a network of children's cultural centres was established in 2003. The network has now ten centres, most of them in the main cities; they are financed jointly by the state and municipalities.

Finland/ 9. Sources and Links

9.1 Key documents on cultural policy

Strategic documents of the Ministry of Education and Culture

Government decision-in-principle on arts and artists' policy. Publications of the Ministry of Education, Finland 2003:2 http://www.minedu.fi/julkaisut/kulttuuri/2003/opm23/opm23.pdf

Government decision-in-principle on design policy (15 June 2000). http://www.minedu.fi/minedu/culture/muotoilu2005eng.doc

Hannele Koivunen: Staying Power of Finnish Cultural Exports. The Cultural Exportation Project of the Ministry of Education, the Ministry for Foreign Affairs and the Ministry of Trade and Industry. Publications of the Ministry of Education, Finland 2005:9. http://www.minedu.fi/julkaisut/kulttuuri/2005/opm09/opm09.pdf

Library Strategy 2010. Policy for access to knowledge and culture. Publications of the Ministry of Education 2003:1. http://www.minedu.fi/minedu/publications/2003/kseng.pdf

Ministry of Education Strategy 2015. Publications of the Ministry of Education, Finland http://www.minedu.fi/julkaisut/hallinto/2003/opm35/opm35.pdf

Creativity Strategy of the Ministry of Education and Culture, 21.11.2005 http://www.minedu.fi/opm/hankkeet/luovuusstrategia/index.html

Research and statistics

Alho, Olli; Hildi Hawkins; Päivi Vallisaari (eds.): Finland: A Cultural Encyclopaedia. Suomalaisen Kirjallisuuden Seura, 1999. 

Arts Council of Finland: The Finnish National Report. Helsinki: Arts Council of Finland, Research and Information Unit, (European Programme of National Cultural Policy Reviews, Council of Europe), 1995.  Prepared for the Council of Europe's review of Finnish cultural policy. 

Heiskanen, Ilkka, Anita Kangas and Ritva Mitchell (eds.): Taiteen ja kulttuurin kentät. Perusrakenteet, hallinta, lainsäädäntö ja uudet haasteet. (The Fields of Art and Culture. Basic structures, governance, legislation and the new challenges; only in Finnish). Helsinki: Tietosanomat, 2002. 

Heiskanen, Ilkka, Pertti Ahonen, Lasse Oulasvirta: Taiteen ja kulttuurin rahoitus ja ohjaus: kipupisteet ja kehitysvaihtoehdot (Financing and Governance of Culture in Finland: Points of Pain and Scenarios for the Future), Cupore publications no 6, 2005.

Ritva Mitchell: Development and Present State of the Finnish System of Arts Councils. in Jorn Langsted (ed): Arm's Length Bodies in Art Administration. University of Aarhus, 2003. 

Tilastokeskus / Statistics Finland: Joukkoviestimet / Finnish Mass Media 2004. Viestintä ja kulttuuri / Culture and the Media, (bi-annual, the latest publication synthesises media market statistics 2000-2004 2006; on-line statistics at http://www.stat.fi/til/jvie/tau.html

Tilastokeskus / Statistics Finland: Kulttuuritilasto 2005 / Cultural Statistics. Viestintä ja kulttuuri / Culture and the Media, 2006 (bi-annual, see also on-line tables at http://www.stat.fi/til/klt/tau.html)

Finland/ 9. Sources and Links

9.2 Key organisations and portals

Cultural policy making bodies

Ministry of Education and Culture
http://www.minedu.fi/minedu/index.html

Agencies, institutions

National Archive
http://www.narc.fi

National Board of Antiquities
http://www.nba.fi

Finnish National Gallery
http://www.fng.fi/

National Opera
http://www.operafin.fi

National Theatre
http://www.nationaltheatre.fi/

Finnish Film Archive
http://www.sea.fi

Professional associations

Union of Musicians
http://www.musicfinland.com

Artists' Association of Finland
http://www.artists.fi/english/index.html

The Union of Finnish Writers
http://www.suomenkirjailijaliitto.fi/

Finnish Book Publishers' Association
http://www.skyry.net

Finnish Chamber of Films
http://www.filmikamari.fi

The Finnish National Group of IFPI
http://www.ifpi.fi

Finnish Craft Organisation
http://www.taitogroup.fi

Association of Finnish Symphony Orchestras
http://www.sinfoniaorkesterit.fi

Association of Finnish Theatres
http://www.teatteriliitto.fi/index_eng.htm

Grant-giving bodies

Arts Council of Finland
http://www.taiteenkeksustoimikunta.fi

Finnish Cultural Foundation
http://www.skr.fi/english/

Academy of Finland, Research Council for Culture and Society
http://www.aka.fi/eng

TEKES, Funding Agency for Technology and Innovations
http://www.tekes.fi/eng/

Sitra, the Finnish Innovation Fund
http://www.sitra.fi/en/

Copyright organisations

Teosto, Finnish Composers' Copyright Society
http://www.teosto.fi/

Gramex, Copyright Society of Performing Artists and Phonogram Producers
http://www.gramex.fi/

Kopiosto, Copyright organisation for authors, publishers and performing artists
http://www.kopiosto.fi/

Kuvasto, Copyright association for artists working in the field of visual art
http://www.kuvastory.fi

Tuotos, Copyright association for audiovisual producers
http://www.tuotos.fi/english.html

Copyright Council at the Ministry of Education and culture
http://www.minedu.fi/OPM/Tekijaenoikeus/?lang=en

National Board of Patents and Registration
http://www.prh.fi/en.html

EFFI- Electronic Frontier Finland
http://www.effi.org/

Promotion and Information Centres

Finnish Music Information Centre
http://www.fimic.fi

Information Centre for Dance
http://www.tanssikeskustoimikunta.fi

Theatre Information Centre
http://www.teatteri.org

Esek, Performing Music Promotion Centre
http://www.gramex.fi

AVEK, The Promotion Centre for Audio-visual Culture
http://www.kopiosto.fi

FILI - Finnish Literature, Information Centre
http://dbgw.finlit.fi/fili/eng/index.php

Cultural research and statistics

Statistics Finland
http://www.stat.fi/

Academy of Finland
http://www.aka.fi/

Centre for International Mobility CIMO
http://www.cimo.fi

Foundation for Cultural Policy Research
http://www.cupore.fi

National Repository Library
http://www.nrl.fi/english/index.html

Culture / arts portals

Cultural portal to Finnish cultural life and institutions
http://www.kulttuuri.net/

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The Council of Europe/ERICarts "Compendium of Cultural Policies and Trends in Europe, 9th edition", 2008