Legal experts: aspects of True Finns anti-racism declaration would violate constitution

“Positive discrimination” condemned by party commonplace in Finland

Kaarlo Tuori

Tuomas Ojanen

Veli-Pekka Viljanen

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A number of legal scholars in Finland say that a declaration by the Parliamentary group of the True Finns party against discrimination, racism, and violence contains elements that would go against the Finnish constitution, and would also be in violation of certain international human rights agreements that Finland is committed to.
      Kaarlo Tuori, Professor of Jurisprudence at the University of Helsinki, sees the declaration as “very problematic”.
      Tuomas Ojanen, Professor of Constitutional Law at the University of Helsinki, denounces the declaration as “terrible”, and urges other Parliamentary groups to ignore calls from the True Finns to join it. “On the contrary, it should be condemned”, Ojanen says.
      Veli-Pekka Viljanen, Professor of Constitutional Law at the University of Turku, says that the implementation of the declaration would lead to a significant deterioration of equality in Finland.
     
The True Finns’ declaration includes the following sentence: “We condemn any discrimination or favouritism on the labour market, in education, or in other connections based on language, culture, religion, or similar factors.”
      In this, the declaration condemns racist discrimination as well as “positive discrimination”, or special treatment for members of a certain group as a way of rectifying an imbalance.
      “We have traditionally thought that to improve the position of women in society and in working life it is possible to implement special measures to this end. For instance, in certain appointments to civil servants’ jobs it is possible to deliberately choose a woman, thereby favouring a candidate on the basis of gender”, Tuomas Ojanen says.
      Another example involves language quotas at universities, where a certain proportion of places for study are reserved for students with a good knowledge of Swedish.
     
The Finnish constitution states that nobody should be treated differently on the basis of gender, age, origin, language, religion, political or philosophical conviction or opinion, state of health, disability, or other similar grounds without a valid reason.
      The government initiative that is linked with the part of the constitution in question notes that this does not impede positive treatment – that is, measures aimed at securing the position and conditions of a certain group.
      “Linked with the idea of equality is that groups in the weakest position in society can be supported”, Veli-Pekka Viljanen says. “Finnish legislation is based on this idea to a significant degree.”
     
“The idea of not allowing positive special treatment is blind on a societal level. Legislation can become indirectly discriminatory, if we think that there are no differences between groups”, Viljanen says.
      Tuori says that the Parliament’s Constitutional Law Committee has often noted that positive discrimination is legal.
      “For instance legislation on the disabled is full of special treatment”, Tuori says.
      Veli-Pekka Viljanen cites as an example of positive discrimination the various benefits enjoyed by war veterans.
     


Previously in HS International Edition:
  True Finns renounce racism, discrimination, and favouritism (26.5.2011)
  Timo Soini to reprimand MP Hakkarainen again for racially insensitive remarks (24.5.2011)

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