All of Finland's parties, except the populists, have signed a declaration of intent on climate. The goal is to declare carbon neutrality by 2035.
Achieving the goal of net-zero CO2 emissions into the atmosphere (in English, quite simply, carbon neutrality) by 2035: this is the objective set by Finland's new government, led by Antti Rinne, for the next four years. It is the most ambitious climate target in the world, and it comes at a crucial moment — namely, as Finland prepares to assume the presidency of the European Union on 1 July.
The governing coalition — made up of social democratic forces together with centrists and greens — decided to set itself this objective following the results of the European elections on 26 May, in which the Finnish Green Party achieved its best-ever result in Europe, obtaining 16 per cent of the vote and becoming the second-largest green party in Europe. Finland's April elections — won by the social democrats by a narrow margin — had already been held under the banner of environmental issues, with climate at the top of the agenda.
The programme — which is still awaiting formalisation — prioritises overcoming the current climate crisis, in line with the objectives set out by the Paris Agreement. The first step towards achieving CO2 emissions neutrality will be to completely abandon fossil fuels, without compromising economic wellbeing. This objective will not merely serve as a guideline but will be enshrined in law.
While the Italian senate rejected the idea of declaring a climate emergency, eight parties in the Finnish parliament have signed a joint declaration on climate, laying the groundwork for a shared debate. Finnish voters had already made climate the number-one issue in the national vote on 14 April 2019. Not only did thousands of people take to the streets — including young people with their mass school strike — but so did businesses, the finance sector and trade unions. All parties, with the exception of the populist True Finns party, placed climate at the top of their electoral programmes.
Finland is not the first nation to have declared its intention to achieve the 'zero emissions' target: back in 2015, Sweden had already announced its intention to become the first country to abandon fossil fuels. For this reason, Antti Rinne has sought to set up a challenge with the Swedish cousins to demonstrate who will actually manage to become the first country in the world to reach that goal. In short, climate is becoming the subject of a race: who knows — by leveraging competition, it might be possible to draw a few more European states into this intriguing contest.
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At present, 18 European countries — including Italy, this time — have announced their intention to cut their emissions by 2050 (as opposed to the more ambitious 2035 target of Sweden and Finland). On the subject of ambitious targets, outside Europe there is even a country that would like to become carbon-free by 2021: that country is Costa Rica. As the Costa Ricans themselves acknowledge, completely eliminating fossil fuels within a few years is probably unrealistic, even if the plan will serve to lay the groundwork for a faster energy transition. So while the Costa Rican proposal carries more "programmatic" than "technical" value, the Finnish law means that Finland can consider itself at the front of the race to abandon fossil fuels and adopt a truly sustainable economy.