Nordic Region
27 years since the last changes: Time to revise the Helsinki Treaty?
During its meeting in Helsinki in early November, the Nordic Council decided to call on the Nordic governments to start a “joint discussion with the Nordic Council about how the Nordic countries can better anchor the Nordic cooperation.” Or in other words: revise the Helsinki Treaty.
The labour ministers consider collective agreements' position in the Nordics
The Nordic governments should introduce a new kind of support where employers who sign up to collective agreements pay lower employer taxes for their employees. That was what Fafo researcher Jon Erik Dølvik proposed when he presented a report about collective agreements in the Nordics during the Nordic labour ministers’ meeting.
Karen Ellemann new NCM Secretary General
Karen Ellemann is the next Secretary General of the Nordic Council of Ministers. She is seen as a heavy-weight candidate taking up a central post for the Nordic cooperation.
Nordic trade unions “too distant from rest of EU”
Who gains the most out of being a fly on the wall at the Council of Nordic Trade Unions congress in Oslo – the journalist or the social anthropologist? I suspect the latter, but since I am a journalist I will present the big news first: Iceland will host a tripartite meeting on green and just reform on 1 December 2023.
Finland extends parental leave
Three Nordic countries have recently made changes to parental leave. Iceland increased the leave for both parents to six months in 2021, while Denmark and Finland made changes this summer.
Nordic focus on new jobs without discrimination
Upskilling and gender equality will be central to the Nordic countries’ labour market cooperation in the coming years.
Social sustainability under pressure from many sides
Street battles in Sweden between people from disadvantaged areas and the police have less to do with a Danish politician wanting to burn the Koran and more to do with a lack of social glue between different groups.
The Nordic Council of Ministers' Secretary General steps down in 2023
Finnish Paula Lehtomäki, who became Secretary General of the Nordic Council of Ministers in 2019, has decided to step down in March next year at the end of her contract.
From modest environmental goals to the world's most sustainable region
23 March marked 60 years since the signing of the Helsinki Treaty in 1950. It came into force on 1 July that year and saw amongst other things the creation of the Nordic Council of Ministers – the Nordic governments' cooperation body.
Is the green transition going too fast?
All the Nordic countries agree that a green transition is needed in order to stop a climate catastrophe. But should the transition also do more than reduce CO2 emissions?
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