Current affairs

Finland will hold its parliamentary elections on Sunday 2 April 2023. Advance voting will be possible abroad from 22 to 25 March 2023. The Ministry for Foreign Affairs is responsible for organising advance voting abroad.

Finland, like many other States, has decided to take part in two sets of international judicial proceedings in which Ukraine demands that Russia be held responsible for violations of international law.

On 3 February 2022, the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) declared inadmissible two applications concerning the length of proceedings for damages in a criminal case.

The time limit for lodging an application before the European Court of Human Rights will be reduced from the current six months to four months on 1 February 2022.

New Finnish chairs were appointed to two committees of the Council of Europe in the same week of November. Ambassador Nina Nordström, Finland’s Permanent Representative to the Council of Europe, was elected President of the Statutory Committee of the Council of Europe anti-corruption body, GRECO. Ambassador Päivi Kairamo will again chair the Council of Europe Committee on Counter-Terrorism (CDT) in 2022.

The three-year term 2022-2024 is Finland’s first full membership in the Human Rights Council. Finland will continue its long-term work to promote universal human rights.

Adopted in June 2013, Protocol No. 15 to the European Convention on Human Rights will enter into force on 1 August 2021. Its entry into force will reduce the application period to four months and also introduce other changes to the right to submit applications to the European Court of Human Rights. The shorter application period is, however, subject to a transition period, which ends on 1 February 2022.

On 13 July 2021, the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) issued a decision, which annuls the Court’s previous judgment concerning Finland in the case of N.A. v. Finland relating to the return of an asylum-seeker to Iraq in its entirety.

The European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) deemed on 27 May 2021 the complaint made against Finland to be manifestly ill-founded and decided to not investigate it.

On 4 February 2021, the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child adopted its Views on the primacy of the best interests of the child in a matter concerning asylum. The Committee found that there had been violation of Articles 3 (primacy of the best interests of the child), 19 (protection of the child from violence) and 22 (right of the child to protection and humanitarian assistance; refugees and asylum seekers) of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC).