Finnish horses will soon be required to have larger stalls and a companion present in the stable, according to a new regulation. The companion can be another horse, mule, or donkey.
Finland has decided to promote horse welfare with a new regulation. Horses should, for example, have better opportunities to move around in larger areas and have daily outdoor time. In newly built stables, the paddock must be at least 300 square meters.
Stalls must also be expanded for horses with a withers height over 170 centimeters, and stables must have natural light. Water must always be available and during winter it must be changed every six hours. Horses may not be without hay for more than six hours.
New requirements also stipulate that horses must have a companion on site that they can see, hear, and feel daily. Horses are herd animals and loneliness can negatively affect their health.
“Particularly the fact that it is now clearly prescribed that equines may not be kept alone is, in my opinion, one of the most important reforms for improving equine welfare”, writes Terhi Simonen-Jokinen, a specialist expert at Finland’s Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry, in an email to Finnish public broadcaster Yle.
Muzzle contact
The horse’s companion must be either another horse, donkey, or mule. However, donkeys must have another donkey as company in the stable. One detail included in the regulation is that horses must be able to have daily muzzle-to-muzzle interaction, something that horse owner Anna Tujulin, who owns 22 horses herself, considers particularly important.
— There is research showing that this is even more important than them seeing each other. I have also seen stallions that during periods haven’t received that touch and they can quite quickly develop even aggressive behavior, she says.
The regulation also states that foals may not be weaned before six months of age, and that young horses under two years old must be allowed to live in herds.
The changes will take effect at the turn of the year.
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The vocational school Vamia in Vaasa, Finland receives thousands of applications annually from Africa and Asia for its free culinary education program.
Of this year’s 4,059 applications, nearly half came from Nigeria, and now the Finnish government wants the education to become fee-based for non-European students.
Ebuka Mbanugo, 33, from Nigeria already has a degree in accounting from his home country. But that degree hasn’t been of much use to him in his hometown of Lagos, he explains. Instead, he chose to move to Finland to study on Vamia’s international culinary program.
The education is free of charge – that is, financed by Finnish taxpayers.
— Honestly, I wouldn’t be able to afford to pay a fee for my studies, he tells Yle.
He used his savings to travel to Finland and has received financial help from his family to build a life here.
Majority from Africa and Asia
In the practice kitchen at Vamia, the majority of students come from Asia and Africa. Of this year’s over 4,000 applications, 1,962 came from Nigeria, and overall the number of applications from outside the EU has increased dramatically in recent years.
Last year, over 12,200 people from countries outside Europe studied at Finnish vocational schools and 4,700 at upper secondary schools.
Principal Åsa Stenbacka says she doesn’t know exactly why the school receives so many applications from outside Europe, but she assumes that the free education plays a decisive role. It takes three people a full week to go through all the applications.
€7,000 per student
Each graduated restaurant chef provides Vamia with approximately €7,000 through the tax-funded state subsidy system. The government’s proposal means that students from outside Europe would have to pay this amount themselves to finance their education.
— This will significantly affect the number of applicants, says Stenbacka, who argues that both the school and companies that need workers will be affected.
She points out that many students already work alongside their studies to manage financially.
— If they also have to pay a fee of €7,000, it will become unsustainable for them, she continues.
About 75 percent of graduates find jobs in Finland’s restaurant industry. Some move to the capital region, Lapland, or Åland. At the same time, unemployment has increased in Finland in recent years, and the restaurant industry is notorious for its low wages and high staff turnover.
“The economy is strained”
Education Minister Anders Adlercreutz explains that a fee for foreign students is a way to save money for the state.
— At the beginning of the government term, the government made an assessment that a fee could be appropriate, since the economy is strained, he states.
He also highlights the problem of upper secondary schools and vocational schools attracting foreign students, often minors living without guardians in Finland.
Apprenticeship education, where students study in combination with work, will remain free of charge going forward.
Gold is seen as a safe investment during uncertain times – its value has remained stable for centuries and the price is now breaking records almost daily.
Deposits believed to contain gold worth several billion euros have been discovered in eastern Finland. Mining company Endomines is now planning a massive expansion and aims to become a significant global gold producer.
In the easternmost part of Finland, just a few dozen kilometers from the Russian border, large gold deposits have raised hopes of an imminent gold rush. Record-high gold prices and new promising discoveries are giving Finnish mining company Endomines a bright outlook for the future.
— I believe in gold. There’s enormous potential here that hasn’t been exploited yet. We’re finding new promising deposits all the time, says the company’s CEO Kari Vyhtinen to Finnish public broadcaster Yle.
The latest major discovery is the Ukko deposit in the municipality of Ilomantsi, where gold occurs in connection with an enormous iron formation that is seven kilometers long. The deposit is part of the so-called Karelian gold line, a 40-kilometer-long area in Ilomantsi’s greenstone belt.
According to Bo Långbacka, a specialist expert at the Geological Survey of Finland, the Finnish bedrock is fully comparable to the rich ore areas in Canada and Australia. He believes that Finland, from that perspective, has Europe’s best conditions for gold extraction.
Seven-fold production increase planned
Currently, Endomines knows of approximately half a million troy ounces of gold (about 15.5 tons) in its area, but the goal is significantly higher than that.
— In five years, we should ideally know of two million troy ounces of gold. Our gold production could then amount to 100,000 troy ounces, Vyhtinen continues.
This would mean a seven-fold production increase, and with today’s gold price, which is around €106 per gram, such production would be worth approximately €330 million annually.
1,200 meters underground
Endomines currently operates two mines in Ilomantsi – the Pampalo mine and the Hosko mine. At the Pampalo mine, work is now being conducted at a depth of 900 meters, and by 2032, operations will be 1.2 kilometers underground.
The company invests four to six million euros annually in prospecting to find new gold deposits. Operations are growing rapidly – the company has about a hundred employees and recently hired 20 new staff members.
Ahead of autumn’s test drilling at the Ukko deposit, the CEO says the excitement keeps him awake at night.
— It’s so exciting and thrilling to wait for the results, says Vyhtinen.
Helsinki District Court rules that Finland lacked jurisdiction to prosecute the crew of oil tanker Eagle S.
Harsh criticism is now directed at authorities’ boarding of the vessel in international waters – an action that risks becoming very costly for Finnish taxpayers.
The ruling from Helsinki District Court is a heavy setback for Finnish authorities who dramatically boarded the oil tanker Eagle S in international waters last year. The district court establishes that Finland simply lacked the right to prosecute the crew for the alleged cable breaks.
Captain Davit Vadatchkoria and officers Robert Egizaryan and Santosh Kumar Chaurasia were charged with aggravated sabotage and aggravated disruption of postal and telecommunications traffic. The charges also included alternative, lesser criminal classifications: sabotage, aggravated vandalism and causing public danger.
But since the cable breaks – which involved five underwater cables – occurred outside Finland’s territorial waters, Finnish criminal law cannot be applied, the court states.
“International waters – period”
Lawyer Herman Ljungberg, who represents shipping company Caravella FZ LLC, has consistently argued that the action was illegal.
— The damage occurred in international waters, period. Therefore Finland has nothing to do with the matter. Only the flag state, in this case the Cook Islands, has jurisdiction, he tells Svenska Yle.
Ljungberg goes further and calls the incident an illegal hijacking.
— The boarding should absolutely be investigated. We already filed a police report about the boarding at an earlier stage, but it was left without investigation, he says.
District court refers to maritime law convention
In its ruling, the district court states that the incident was an accident and refers to articles in the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea. The court does note that the act according to the charges had caused “exceptionally large” economic damage, but still establishes that a Finnish court cannot try the case.
The court’s conclusion underscores the inappropriateness of the authorities’ actions: They boarded a vessel in international waters, held it for over two months and brought charges – despite lacking jurisdiction.
Taxpayers will pay the bill
The direct cost of the failed legal process already amounts to €193,000 in legal costs that the Finnish state must reimburse the three acquitted defendants.
But that could be the beginning of a significantly more expensive bill. The shipping company is preparing extensive damage claims.
— It could involve damages of tens of millions of euros. The shipping company believes the Finnish state owes them money due to the illegal hijacking of the vessel, says Ljungberg.
He points to the cargo – primarily unleaded gasoline – allegedly being damaged during the months the vessel was held, as well as lost rental income while the ship stood idle outside Sköldvik, Finland.
“Shadow fleet” – a loaded term without clear definition
The case has been characterized by strong words and dramatic headlines. When the EU introduced new sanctions in May 2025 against what is called “the Russian shadow fleet,” Eagle S was placed on a list of so-called shadow vessels.
The term “shadow vessel” or “shadow fleet” is used by politicians and in media, but there is no unified, official definition of what is meant. The concept generally seems to refer to older vessels with complicated ownership structures that transport Russian oil, possibly to circumvent international sanctions.
That a vessel appears on the EU’s sanctions list does not, however, affect the question of jurisdiction. In the Eagle S case, the court establishes that Finland lacked the right to prosecute the crew, regardless of the vessel’s status as a listed shadow ship.
What happens now?
The prosecutors, represented by Deputy Prosecutor General Jukka Rappe, have not yet commented on the ruling. Rappe has previously unsuccessfully tried to justify why Finland should have jurisdiction:
— In this case, the cable capacity has been so large that in my opinion it is clear that data communication and the electrical system have been affected in Finland. Therefore the act is considered to have been performed in Finland even though the location where the cables were cut lies outside Finnish borders, Rappe told Svenska Yle in August.
Now prosecutors face the choice of appealing to the Court of Appeal or accepting defeat.
It is also possible that the Cook Islands, as flag state for Eagle S, chooses to take over the investigation – if they would even consider there is a case to investigate.
For the three crew members, who spent months in Finland with travel bans and obligations to report to police weekly, the matter is now over. But for the Finnish state and taxpayers, the consequences of the hasty boarding could prove far more costly than those responsible originally imagined.
Finland’s population is shrinking and aging at record pace, with the number of births dropping from 60,000 to 45,000 in just over ten years.
— The population pyramid is standing on its tip, warns demography professor Jan Saarela.
Finland is grappling with an accelerating population crisis that threatens the country’s future welfare. New figures show that the number of school-age children is expected to continue declining over the next 25 years, while the proportion of elderly people increases dramatically.
— This is hardly a favorable development for the future, states Jan Saarela, professor of demography at Åbo Akademi University in Finland.
The numbers speak clearly. In the early 2010s, around 60,000 children were born annually in Finland. During 2023 and 2024, the number had plummeted to approximately 45,000 – a 25 percent decrease in just over a decade.
The decline primarily affects the native Finnish population, and consulting firm MDI’s recent report confirms that the population will continue to shrink and the dependency burden for those working will become increasingly heavy.
Rural areas hit hardest
The demographic crisis strikes with varying intensity across the country. Population projections for 2024-2050 show a Finland where rural municipalities shrink dramatically while only a few larger cities continue to grow.
When professor Saarela is asked by Finnish public broadcaster Yle whether Finns in rural areas can expect even worse services in the future, he answers briefly:
— Yes, I believe so. I also think we will see more municipal mergers in the future, considering that the number of municipalities in Finland is still very large. I don’t advocate for municipal mergers, but I note that it will probably become necessary.
Residents in rural municipalities can soon expect significantly worse services. Photo: Reinhold Möller/CC BY-SA 4.0
Although population concentration in larger cities is a global phenomenon, Finland stands out negatively. The same development is seen in other Nordic countries, but Finland fares worst.
— But Finland is, as far as I know, worst in class and has been for several years, says Saarela.
“More children should be born”
To break the negative spiral, the demography professor sees only two possible paths: more births or increased mass immigration.
— One is that more children should be born, and the other is increased immigration, he argues.
Many Finns postpone having children for practical reasons. Photo: Polina Tankilevitch/Pexels
The low birth rate is partly due to many young Finns finding it difficult to combine parenthood with other aspects of life.
— It doesn’t feel advantageous to have children at certain life stages, so many postpone the decision. In some cases, people wait so long that there are no large families at all, explains Saarela.
One proposal is therefore to introduce higher child allowances for the first child.
— Perhaps a higher child allowance for the first child would help. But it requires resources, says the professor, while also noting that resources become increasingly scarce as the number of people of working age decreases.
Increased immigration?
The second path, increased immigration, is politically sensitive and difficult to plan. Recent years’ substantial immigration, particularly from Ukraine, has temporarily increased the population. But many Ukrainians plan to return when the war ends.
— Immigration is affected by global events and is difficult to predict. Statistics Finland’s projections were previously based on a certain number of immigrants, but recent years’ sharp increase has made the projections no longer accurate, says Saarela.
Researchers also cannot say exactly how large labor immigration would need to be to reverse the trend.
Mass immigration is said to potentially slow population decline, but brings with it a range of other problems. Photo: etvulc/iStock
A risky path
Large-scale migration, primarily from non-European countries, also brings a long series of difficult-to-solve problems and negative societal effects in the form of increased insecurity, poverty, crime, growing parallel societies and ethnic conflicts that are imported to the receiving country. Mass immigration has also proven to be enormously costly economically.
Sweden is one of the Western world’s clearest examples – from one of the world’s safest countries to a country plagued by foreign conflicts, segregation, gang crime, shootings and bombings where the majority of serious violent crimes are committed by people with foreign backgrounds.
Finland has so far avoided Sweden’s most acute problems through lower immigration, but the same negative development is visible here as well.
In summary, professor Saarela sees few bright spots. The negative population development is, according to him, very difficult to reverse, and the challenges to Finland’s population structure will likely persist for the foreseeable future.
