Prime Minister Sanna Marin returned from Brussels to mixed reviews this week after helping to negotiate the EU's 750-billion-euro coronavirus recovery fund.
The All Points North podcast returns from its summer break to look at the devil in the details, the implications of what really went down in Brussels and whether or not Marin will get the backing required for constitutional changes the deal will require in Finland.
You can listen to the full podcast via the embedded player here, Yle Areena, Spotify, Apple Podcasts or your usual podcast player using the RSS feed. Be sure to subscribe to the show wherever you get your podcasts and sign up for the APN newsletter.
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This week Marin punched back at criticism of the package at a news conference and declared that the bloc's unprecedented decision to move toward joint borrowing is a one-off.
However she admitted that a new budgeting provision that allows the EU to raise taxes is likely here to stay.
Marin is now facing a flurry of complaints claiming that she overstepped the limits of the authority placed in her by Parliament's Constitutional Law Committee to negotiate the package on Finland's behalf.
Foreigners in local elections, Finns Party, Covid sniffer dogs
The APN podcast also covers the role of foreign-background people as voters and candidates in local government elections. We speak with Mexican-born Natalia Rincon, who ran in the 2017 election as a Green Party candidate and is now a council member in Tampere.
This week's show also looks at conflict brewing between employer and employee groups over expanding the right to earnings-based jobless benefits to workers who are not members of unemployment funds. We discuss the Finns Party, which made headlines when long-time party activist and regional campaign chief Pekka Kataja backpedalled on claims that his assailants in a brutal attack were "Arab-looking". Kataja now says that they were likely members of the far-right.
Covid-19 is also in the spotlight with reports of sniffer dogs trained to detect the virus and a contact tracing app due out at the end of August.
Join the conversation!
This week's show was presented by Denise Wall and Egan Richardson. Our producer was Priya Ramachandran D'souza and the sound designer and audio engineer was Laura Koso. Sign up for the All Points North newsletter and if you have any questions or would like to share your thoughts, just contact us via WhatsApp on +358 44 421 0909, on our Facebook or Twitter accounts, or at yle.news@yle.fi and allpointsnorth@yle.fi.