Nina Carlsson (Uppsala University and Migration Institute of Finland)
After a long period of stability, Finland’s naturalisation policy is undergoing significant restrictive changes. These changes were initiated by Prime Minister Petteri Orpo’s right-wing coalition government (2023-), with the radical-right Finns Party as the main driver. The government includes the centre-right National Coalition Party, which received 20,8% of the vote in 2023, the Finns Party (20,1%), the liberal Swedish People’s Party (4,3%), and the conservative Christian Democrats (4,2%).
What unites the government is a common ambition to stimulate Finland’s economy and curtail its fiscal deficit through various austerity measures and tax cuts. While mostly agreeing on austerity, the government parties have mixed ideas on immigration and citizenship. This is reflected in the introduction of unprecedented anti-immigration reforms, while taking some modest steps to encourage labour immigration, which is in decline in Finland.
The multiple citizenship-related policy changes are enforced by the Ministry of the Interior, led by Minister Mari Rantanen of the Finns Party. Rantanen has stated that Finnish citizenship should be seen as a reward for successful integration rather than a gift, and that “nothing” was done to the Citizenship Act for 20 years until the Finns Party began to tighten it from a government position. Rantanen has also stated that she does not believe that restrictions on citizenship discourage labour immigration.
The current Finnish Government Programme is committed to restricting naturalisation through various proposed reforms, some of which have already been implemented. These reforms include an extended residency requirement, a reduction in the number of days allowed abroad, a new citizenship test and language test, and a new income requirement. Additionally, it proposes tighter “good conduct” requirements, expanded criteria for citizenship revocation, the removal of exceptions for stateless people and those with international protection, and investigating the introduction of a national security assessment process, among other reforms.
The new naturalisation restrictions are overseen by the Ministry of the Interior and are divided into three phases, with the first one already in effect.
Amending the Finnish Citizenship Act in three phases
The first phase involved extending the standard residency requirement from five to eight years. The amendments were approved in July 2024 and entered into force on October 1st, 2024. Naturalisation applicants now need to have lived in Finland for the past eight years with approved residence permits, having spent no more than 365 days outside of Finland, of which a maximum of 90 days in the year preceding the naturalisation application. Exceptions with a two-year residency requirement include Nordic citizens and the spouses of Finnish diplomats. Stateless persons and spouses of Finnish citizens will now have a five-year residency requirement instead of the previous four years.
Another significant exception is that persons who meet the language requirement in Finnish or Swedish will have a five-year residency requirement, as previously, and not eight years. Since the language requirement is mandatory for naturalisation, only those eligible for exemptions from the language requirement will be subject to an eight-year residency requirement. The main groups eligible for exemptions include persons aged 65 or older, those with health conditions that prevent language learning, and adults with low literacy.
The second phase includes several reforms: implementing a stricter income requirement, new identity verification rules, stricter good conduct criteria, and expanded grounds for citizenship deprivation. The amendments were approved in October 2025 and will enter into force on December 17, 2025. Applicants will be disqualified from obtaining citizenship if they have received unemployment benefits or social assistance for more than three months in the past two years. Individuals with an “alien passport” must present a valid national passport or similar document. The waiting periods following criminal offences will be extended, and crimes will carry greater weight in the naturalisation process, with a focus on “national security”. Additionally, the criteria for citizenship revocation will be simplified in cases of information that the state deems fraudulent or serious criminal activity.
The third and final phase will involve implementing a citizenship test. The government investigation into the test was made public in February 2025. A working group has proposed a digital multiple-choice citizenship test that focuses on fundamental and human rights, civic knowledge, history, geography, everyday skills, habits, values, security, and digital skills. This test would be mandatory for naturalisation applicants aged 18-64, and study materials would be provided.
The investigation presents three different options for a citizenship test. The first option would introduce a civic knowledge requirement in addition to the existing language requirement. The second option would replace the current language requirement with a civic knowledge test in Finnish or Swedish, serving as an implicit language test. The final option would be a combined language and civic knowledge test.
These three reform phases will significantly reshape naturalisation in Finland after a long period of stability. One might then ask why this is happening and why precisely now.
Why now? The Finns as a government party
It is not surprising that the anti-immigrant, ethnonationalist Finns Party, in charge of key ministries, is taking a hard stance on membership. What may be more surprising, however, is that they are in government. The Finns have been part of a government once before, during Juha Sipilä’s (of the agrarian Centre Party) cabinet from 2015 to 2017. Their time in power ended in a split between supporters of Timo Soini, founder and former leader of the Finns Party, and supporters of the then-newly elected leader Jussi Halla-aho, an anti-immigration hardliner who was convicted of hate speech in 2012.
Nineteen MPs left the Finns Party after the split, forming Uusi vaihtoehto / New Alternative (later Blue Reform and finally the Finnish Reform Movement, which is now dissolved). The new party joined the next Sipilä government (2017-2019). The remaining faction was excluded from the government but took control of the original Finns Party under the leadership of Jussi Halla-aho. Juha Sipilä, and then Minister of Finance Petteri Orpo, stated that the values of the new Finns Party had changed overnight and were no longer compatible with the government or even with Western conceptions of humanity.
Merely six years later, Orpo started leading a government with the Finns Party in charge of immigration and membership. What has changed during these years? Jussi Halla-aho stepped down from party leadership in 2021. He is now the speaker of the Finnish Parliament, thus ranking above the prime minister in official protocol. Halla-aho’s successor, Riikka Purra (current minister of finance), is a close ally of Halla-aho. Early in the Orpo government’s term, the discovery of her racist and violent social media posts led to a government crisis. Shortly before, the economy minister of the Finns Party had already resigned after less than a month in office, having made “jokes” about Hitler, among other statements involving Nazism.
Despite Orpo’s reassurances of “zero tolerance” for racism in the government, there is no evidence that the Finns Party’s ideology has changed since 2017, as shown in the continued use of far-right tropes like the population exchange and derogatory terms for non-white immigrants by its leadership. Instead, it appears that some mainstream parties have reevaluated their values regarding what is acceptable.
Looking West? Similar developments in neighbouring Sweden
Besides the party-political dynamics in Finland, developments in the Nordic region may also have contributed to the tightening of policies and their legitimation. Traditionally, Sweden and Finland have closely followed each other’s membership policies.
Currently, Sweden is undergoing a process similar to Finland’s: introducing a citizenship test that combines language and civic knowledge, raising the residence requirement to eight years, and implementing stricter “good conduct” and income requirements, among other reforms. Mari Rantanen has indeed pointed out that Sweden and other Nordic countries are adopting measures similar to Finland’s, indicating that they are on a shared path. She has also met with her Swedish counterparts to discuss experiences and collaborations in the field of migration, especially deportation and border control.
Since 2022, Sweden has had a minority government coalition similar to Finland’s, led by Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson from the centre-right Moderate Party, along with the small Liberal and Christian Democratic Parties. The minority government is supported by the radical-right Sweden Democrats, who hold significant influence over migration and membership policy and have achieved several of their desired reforms. The Sweden Democrats won a larger vote share than the Moderates in the 2022 election and, in recent opinion polls, have garnered more support than the government parties combined.
Implications for citizenship in Finland and the region
While the effects of these reforms remain to be seen, it is clear that Finland, together with Sweden, is entering a new phase in their membership policies. Overall, these reforms will impact nearly all aspects of naturalisation. Research from other countries suggests that pathways to citizenship will become more challenging, time-consuming, and selective, and that the number of naturalisations will decrease, with some groups becoming permanently excluded. This will, contrary to Minister Rantanen’s beliefs, also negatively affect “labour migrants” and the labour market, with the effects being disproportionately felt by marginalised groups.
The multiple-choice citizenship test will filter out individuals with lower levels of education and those who do not perform well on high-stakes tests. People from countries whose passports Finland does not recognise, such as Somalia, will likely face increased difficulty proving their identity. Long residency requirements will significantly affect individuals with family abroad or an international working life. The new income requirement will disproportionately disadvantage economically struggling naturalisation applicants and will also affect persons with short periods of unemployment in a country with a stagnant economy and discriminatory recruitment processes. At the same time, public discourse has obscured the fact that passing the mandatory language requirement reduces residency time by three years. This signals a symbolic tendency in the government’s communication regarding the reform, with a likely intention of catering to voters of the Finns Party. In sum, these developments will further shrink the boundaries of Nordic citizenship. They reinforce the new trend of viewing long-term hardliner Denmark as a policy role model rather than a warning example. This ought to lead to new interpretations of membership in the Nordics and the role of the far right in determining its boundaries.