The mayor of Helsinki suggested that Helsinki should consider declaring itself an English-speaking city, believing that too many highly skilled international workers are avoiding the Finnish capital, partly because of strict language requirements.
Finland’s two main official languages are Finnish and Swedish. Finnish has 15 grammatical patterns and is notoriously difficult for foreigners to learn. Many companies need Finnish And public sector employees must master both.
Last year’s growing shortage of technology and other professionals prompted the country to try to provide foreign workers and their families with Opportunity to move to Finland for 90 days See if they want to make this move permanent.
But more than 36% of foreign students Finland According to government data, leaving within a year after graduation, most people cited immigration bureaucracy, high taxes and language difficulties as the main reasons for their resignation.
“Helsinki can call itself an English-speaking city, where English-speaking people don’t need to speak Finnish or Swedish,” the capital’s mayor Juhana Vartiainen, Tell the Helsinkin Sanomat newspaper.
Recent papers Alien Four foreign graduate students in fields such as artificial intelligence and mobile communications left the country, saying that Finnish is too difficult, wages are low, and Finns are too difficult to contact.
Vartiainen said that the city and country’s efforts to attract and retain foreign professionals were “a terrible failure”, adding that it “only very slowly fell into the political consciousness that we need employment-based immigration”.
In order to attract more highly skilled foreign professionals, Vartiainen, a former Liberal Conservative MP who was elected to City Hall in June, suggested that Helsinki should also expand English education in kindergartens and elementary schools.
“But these are things decided at the national level, and Helsinki cannot influence them,” he said. However, he added that the climate crisis can make “small, safe, and nature-oriented Finland” a more attractive place for foreigners, and thus benefit Finland.
Finland has brought Nokia, SMS, 5G and Linux to the world, and its start-ups are booming, with a scale of 6 billion euros. It is one of the countries with the largest number of digital start-ups per capita in the world, but experts say that labor supply problems seriously hinder growth .
