Helsinki sets out independently to investigate potential merger of cities in metropolitan area

Jussi Pajunen

Marketta Kokkonen

Juhani Paajanen

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The City of Helsinki has decided to investigate the pros and cons of a merger between Helsinki, Espoo, Vantaa, and Kauniainen.
      In addition, the aim is to study various alternative ways to organize the administration of the region.
      Helsinki Mayor Jussi Pajunen reported at a meeting of the City Council on Wednesday that the question no longer is whether or not Helsinki intends to look into the matter.
      ”Now the question is how such an investigation is to be run”, Pajunen notes.
     
A decision on the launch of the proposed probe is to be made by the City Council in the current autumn.
      Behind the announcement is a joint meeting between the City Councils of Helsinki, Espoo, Vantaa, and Kauniainen that was arranged in June.
      Formally, it was then unanimously decided that voluntary cooperation in the Greater Helsinki area has been successful and an investigation into a potential merger is not of current interest.
      However, it became clear to everybody already then that Helsinki councillors in fact wanted to carry out such a study.
     
The Helsinki councillors held a lively debate on the proposed investigation on Wednesday.
      Minister of Justice Tuija Brax (Green League) stessed that the clarification will have to ”look fair even in the eyes of sceptics”.
      This means that outsider and international experts will also have to be heard. Even critics or ”our good friends across the border” will have to be allowed to voice their opinions.
      Pekka Haavisto (Green League) recommended that the capital should not take an excessively aggressive attitude when clarifying the question of a possible merger.
      Minister of Housing Jan Vapaavuori (National Coalition Party) pointed out that there is a regional housing market and employment market in the Greater Helsinki area, but still all taxation and construction decisions are made by individual cities.
      ”These two simply do not compute", Vapaavuori notes.
     
On the other hand, even some Helsinki councillors were sceptical about the proposed merger.
      For example Yrjö Hakanen (Communist Party) assumed that the gap between decision-makers and citizens would grow even wider in such a super-municipality.
     
On Wednesday evening, Espoo Mayor Marketta Kokkonen regarded it as strange that her Helsinki counterpart had put forward an idea for merger investigations.
      ”In June we decided at a joint meeting of the Greater Helsinki area councils that this kind of assay would not be launched”, Kokkonen reported.
      Kokkonen assumed that Pajunen’s announcement is likely to have a certain impact on ”the joint open commitment and mutual trust of the cities in the Greater Helsinki area”.
      However, Kokkonen pointed out that all joint projects can move ahead only on the basis of mutual agreements.
     
”If Helsinki really intends to make a move towards a merger investigation, we will also have to decide where we stand on this issue”, Vantaa Mayor Juhani Paajanen commented on Pajunen’s announcement.
      Paajanen believes that Helsinki will very well be capable of carrying out its clarifications without any help from other municipalities, but he suspects that then they will be conducted "from the capital’s point of view”.


Previously in HS International Edition:
  Minister of Housing believes in merger of Helsinki and Vantaa (19.9.2008)

Helsingin Sanomat