On 1 January 2009, much of the western parts of the municipality of Sibbo (Sipoo) was forcibly incorporated in the city of Helsinki. This was against the wishes of the vast majority of Sibbo’s inhabitants, of both language groups. In a referendum, 93,3% voted against being incorporated in Helsinki, with only 5% in favour. Still, the central government voted in favour of Helsinki’s forced annexation of the western areas of the centuries old municipality, with only both ministers from the Swedish People’s Party and one lone Centre minister voting against – in accordance with the people’s will – in cabinet.
Today, 8 February 2012, the government finally released its long awaited proposal for the redrawing of Finland’s municipal boundaries. The government proposes cutting the number of municipalities in mainland Finland from today’s 320 to around 70. The municipal level of government in Finland is responsible for the delivery of many services, including healthcare and schools. It must be said that a reform is necessary: the economic situation in many rural, depopulating, ageing districts is very bad, affecting their ability to offer high quality services. Many small districts are compelled to form municipal joint organs with their neighbouring municipalities in order to provide services such as healthcare, with these being managed by less democratically accountable joint committees rather than the individual municipal councils that are directly and transparently elected by municipal residents. But, the government’s proposal appears rushed and ill thought out and plays little attention to linguistic rights and historical identities.
The government today proposes that Sibbo as a municipality is abolished, either subsumed into a super metropolis of a greater Helsinki or ripped into two and split between two neighbouring unilingually Finnish municipalities. Let’s not forget, that Sibbo was until 2003 a majority Swedish-speaking municipality. It was unilingually Swedish until 1953 and its demographics have only rapidly changed in recent decades due to mass internal migration from the Finnish-speaking interior to locations nearer the capital. Still today it has a strong Swedish minority. In an instance, the bureaucratic municipality reform risks sweeping away centuries of history and diminishing the rights of those Swedish-speakers that live in Sibbo.
But it is not just in Sibbo that linguistic rights are threatened with this reform. One proposal suggests that the northern portion of the bilingual municipality of Sjundeå is hived off and “unilingualised” as it is incorporated with its unilingual northern Finnish neighbours; at an instant, the rights of Swedish-speakers to services in their own language would be removed. In Österbotten, at least five majority Swedish-speaking municipalities would suddenly find themselves in new structures were Swedish was the language of only a third of the population.
Finland has two national languages. For Swedish to live in all domains, there must be administrative structures at all levels that operate using Swedish, including municipalities were the language of administration is Swedish. This would reduce these to barely more than a handful. And even outside of language considerations, this reform places local decision-making further away from the individual citizen.
A better idea would be for the government to consider the model in other countries, such as Sweden, where there are both elected counties and municipalities. The larger county level of government could be responsible for such things as the delivery of healthcare and public transportation, services that are more economically efficiently delivered by a larger body with a larger population base. In such a system, municipalities could remain as smaller units than the huge, faceless, unhistorical entities proposed by the government today. Local identities could remain intact meaning that people would remain engaged with local democracy due to living in districts they identified with.
Pictured: An old sign on the western border of Sibbo. Is the municipality about to go the same way as the region of Östra Nyland that was abolished already on 1st January 2011?
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Friday 10.2.12 at 21:20
Troels-Peter
I read about that proposal at Hufvudstadsbladet. Couldn’t figure out what would happen to Swedish in the northern half of Sjundeå.
So both North Sjundeå and Lojo would have to give up Swedish because of their proposed merger with municipalities further north?
If a remainder of Sibbo were to merge with monolingual municipalities further north, how large would the percentage of Swedish-speakers be in the new municipality? Enough, hopefully.
I wonder why the proposal doesn’t see Sibbo merging with some eastern municipalities – ?
We also had a municipal reform in Denmark recently, resulting in some rather unhistorical contructions and the abolishment of counties. We don’t have language issues of course, but personally I think that the German minority in North Slesvig is badly represented now. It’s quite scandalous.
Saturday 11.2.12 at 15:16
Jonas
Hi Troels-Peter,
The proposal suggests that the northern portion of Sjundeå would merge into a greater Lojo, together with the unilingually Finnish-speaking Nummi-Pusula and Karislojo. Lojo is in fact currently only bilingual because of a voluntary decision by its council to apply to be so – it does actually need to be according to the language laws, as it does not have a sufficient proportion of Swedish-speakers to be compulsorily bilingual. In the constellation proposed, Swedish speakers would be even fewer as a proportion and there would certainly be no guarantee that Lojo would continue to be bilingual, even though the actual numbers of Swedish-speakers would be slightly higher.
If northern Sibbo (including Nickby, the municipal “centre” if you will) was incorporated into a municipality with the unilingual municipalities of Tusby, Kervo, Träskända and Nurmijärvi, there would not be enough Swedish-speakers for the new entity to legally bilingual.
The working group’s report does call for some changes to language legislation so that any new municipalities formed in this way might have to offer some form of Swedish services. However, it is difficult to see how that would work in practical terms. And, in any case, the number of Swedish-speakers would be so low in these entities that their voices would be hard to be heard in decision making.
I agree with you that for historical reasons it would make more sense for Sibbo to orientate itself with the rest of Eastern Nyland. The long established population group in Sibbo, which is overwhelmingly Swedish-speaking (the majority of Finnish-speakers are recent newcomers) certainly always had strong ties to Borgå, for example Borgåbladet is the local paper, the local radio station that covers Sibbo is based in Borgå and so on. But, the report stresses commuting links and the fact that a large number of people commute from Sibbo to the capital. It overlooks historical ties completely and is generally very mechanical in its approach, ignoring local distinctive features. In that regard it sounds similar to what has occurred in Denmark a few years back.
Sunday 26.2.12 at 0:32
Prometo
Rape? Thats a very strong word Jonas. I think that Espoo, Vantaa, Helsinki, Kauniainen and Sipoo combined would form too large a municipality, but if it reduced the influence of the Swedish language along the coast then I am all for it. A 21st century Finland needs to remove the shackles of forced Swedish and coercion of those in power. 4 percent of the mainland speaks Swedish and yet this language has more nationwide official status then Finnish, the minority language spoken by 96 percent of the people. This country is very sick and I will be spending my time on trying to change that.
Sunday 26.2.12 at 20:56
Jonas
Prometo… true to form
You don’t think it’s a good idea for the capital region plus Sibbo to merge… unless it has the side-effect of undermining the rights of the population group that has lived there longest, which in this case happens to be Swedish-speaking. One could not make it up… a bit like the True Finns pre-election defence policy, “we are against any defence cuts, except closing the Swedish-speaking Nylands brigad”.
Monday 27.2.12 at 13:10
Rasmus
The majority of the Finnish people fortunately are not like Prometo, as shown by the fact that more than 50% voted for a Swedish-speaking artist and Swedish-speaking song to represent Finland in the Eurovision Song Contest this year in the national contest on Satursday.
Wednesday 7.3.12 at 6:52
Troels-Peter
I’ve been looking a bit at this map: http://hbl.fi/kommunreformen
I was wondering: doesn’t the language law also state that a municipality should be bilingual if the minority numbers 3,000 people? In that case I suppose if Sibbo merged with places like Kervo, Träskända end Tusby, the new municipality would still have to be so – ? Or has this rule been abandoned?
Still, the situation would be less favourable to Swedish, of course.
If municipalities like Lovisa and Borgå were to merge with the smaller municipalities further north, would this mean that bilingualism would have to expand to these areas? Didn’t something like that happen near Karleby somewhere?
Thursday 8.3.12 at 13:08
jokuvaan
“Or has this rule been abandoned?”
No it has not been changed, but officially bilingual municipality and Swedish services wont always go hand in hand.
Tuesday 13.3.12 at 0:04
Troels-Peter
I found the Karleby thing now. It seems that it was merged with Kelviå, Lochteå and Ullava two years ago, so the new municipality is bilingual all over. To judge from the street signs I can see in Google Streetview, it seems that bilingualism is on its way, albeit slow in coming.
Anyway, Karleby is way above the limit, both in numbers and percentage. I suppose Sibbo could get in trouble when it comes to percentage if it merged with northern municipalities… but hopefully the 3,000 rule is still in force when it comes to numbers?