Sound Financial Management is one of the Principles of Good Democratic Governance, and an important condition for a continuous delivery of public services to the citizens. This issue holds particular relevance in Finland today, given the recent extensive restructuring of the local government in the country that has shifted the public authorities’ responsibilities for health, social, and rescue services to the newly formed well-being counties.

In order to collect information on the reliability on municipal resources as well as on the local finance management practices, the tools of the Centre of Expertise on local finance benchmarking for local and central authorities were implemented in 2023 in cooperation with the Regional Council of Central Finland. Valuable data was provided by the Ministry of Finance and the participating municipalities; it was analysed and presented to the relevant stakeholders on the 8th  of November 2023, in Jyväskylä and online. A follow up stakeholder discussion on the benchmarking results contributed to clarification of the different issues to be addressed in an upcoming Policy advice on fiscal decentralisation, for the Finnish central authorities.

Further to the presentation of the local finance benchmarking results, Council of Europe experts and staff met several key partners for a discussion on the 9th of November in Helsinki, to kick-start the process for preparation of the Policy advice report. The report will aim to provide concrete recommendations for strengthening of the fiscal autonomy of the local and regional governments, in line with the relevant Council of Europe Committee of Ministers’ recommendations on local governance matters.

The activities were organised under the Council of Europe – European Union Joint Project “Delivering Good Governance and Balanced Local Economy in Finland”.