Finland’s former SDP leader and Finance Minister Jutta Urpilainen is poised to become Finland’s next EU commissioner, according to Swedish-language daily Hufvudstadsbladet.
This would be mould-breaking as all of Finland’s EU commissioners have to date been male.
Social Democratic Party chair Antti Rinne is working on forming a new coalition government, but as soon as that job is done, he will appoint Finland’s next EU commissioner to replace Jyrki Katainen, given the National Coalition’s election result.
Former Prime Minister Katainen’s National Coalition Party nabbed the third-highest number of seats in the recent parliamentary election, behind the Social Democrats and Finns Party.
Contactless payment
National daily Helsingin Sanomat asks how secure contactless payments really are. A clothing shop in eastern Finland reports that its card reader debited 400 euros from a customer who was in the process of retrieving her wallet.
The transaction should not have been possible as the limit for contactless payments in Finland (where a debit or credit card is held close to a payment terminal) is 50 euros, after being raised from 25 euros last month. Moreover, the customer had not tapped the card terminal.
The customer was using a Danske Bank card, which according to the bank, was an older card allowing higher contactless payments when coupled with the cardholder’s signature. These cards have mostly been phased out, according to Danske Bank.
Finance Finland, which represents Finland's finance sector, said contactless payments have become increasingly popular in recent years, with about 80 percent of people using the no-touch form of monetary transaction, up from some 50 percent two years ago.
Pension knowledge gap
Agricultural newspaper Maaseudun Tulevaisuus reports that only a third of working-age residents know how much their pensions will total, according to a survey by Keva, which is in charge of pensions for public sector workers.
Nearly 40 percent of respondents to Keva’s survey said they had no idea of the size of their future pensions.
Wisdom did seem to increase with age, as some 90 percent of those over the age of 60 could put an exact figure on their retirement income.
A total of 1,173 people participated in the survey commissioned by Keva and carried out by pollster Kantar. The margin of error was 2.9 percentage points.