Left Alliance Parliamentary Group

The Left Alliance is a strongly influential force in the Eduskunta, where our parliamentary group is the fourth biggest with 17 MPs. The group is chaired by Annika Lapintie. Her deputies are Esko-Juhani Tennilä and Merja Kyllönen. We are working to ensure a secure everyday life for citizens and want to preserve the Nordic welfare state with its health services, schools and libraries.

A Finland of fairness

We want Finland to be a country that treats all of its citizens fairly and cherishes a clean environment. Everyone has the right to an adequate livelihood and a secure life. A well functioning working life and successful businesses are its foundation.

The more people are in work, the easier it is for Finland to finance the spending that our welfare state demands. That is what makes it essential to raise the employment rate. It is essential also for people’s own lives. It makes sense to spend money directly on job creation, for example to employ health visitors and nurses, doctors and auxiliary school staff. At the moment, the public sector’s share of the labour force is the lowest in the Nordic countries.

In our view, it makes no sense for the State to subsidise employers who pay low wages. In general, workers should be paid wages on which they can get by. Now the number of employed poor has even been increasing.

Health services, day care, the comprehensive school, public transport

The Finns want services. Arranging them is the responsibility of municipalities, but the State must also play its part by making sufficient funding available. What is involved is a political value choice between big tax cuts and services.

Poverty can be eliminated

The elimination of poverty is our goal. It is not only prolonged unemployment that causes poverty, but also the low level of security of basic subsistence. Both causes must be tackled if poverty is to be reduced. The Left Alliance Parliamentary Group calls for increases in basic per diem benefits, combined benefits, the minimum per diem maternity benefit, study grants and pensions. We argued for a long time that the share of housing costs that income support recipients must themselves bear should be abolished – and we did so successfully. That is one means of reducing poverty.

Poverty is not just a shortage of money; if often leads to many kinds of marginalisation and the malaise that is reflected in the everyday lifes of all of us.

Towards a social Europe

Increasingly many things are of such a nature that they cannot be changed by decisions made in Finland alone. We support a Europe that gets to grips with the problems of its citizens’ everyday lives.

Higher employment, better services and more secure conditions of employment are needed in all EU countries. Better protection for the environment and more sustainable development are likewise needed. Finland must be active and prevent “dumping” when it comes to taxes, conditions of employment and environmental protection. The Left Alliance does not want to make the EU a military power that competes with the United States.

Towards a better world

Climate change is bringing with it a major transformation of the conditions of people’s lives. That is why we support measures to limit greenhouse gas emissions. We also support world trade based on ground rules that protect people and the natural environment. We want to increase development expeditiously to 0.7 per cent of GDP.