- Enterprises
- Industrial policy
- Innovation policy
- Focus areas
- Regulation of business operations
- Internationalisation of enterprises
- Single market of the EU
- Business services
- Corporate social responsibility (CSR)
- MEE Business Sector Services
- Enterprise financing
- Working life
- Labour legislation
- Employment contract and employment relationship
- Working time and annual holiday
- Improving and maintaining employees’ competence
- Non-discrimination and equality in working life
- Protection of privacy at work and working with children
- Co-operation procedure and other personnel representation systems
- Key points of the Co-operation Act
- Negotiation obligation
- Content and timing of negotiation obligation
- Duty to inform representatives of personnel groups
- Undertaking’s general plans, principles and objectives
- Personnel and training plan
- Matters to be handled in the co-operation procedure
- Co-operation procedure when the use of personnel is reduced
- Confidentiality and sanctions
- Co-operation within a Finnish group of undertakings
- Co-operation within a community-wide group of undertakings and an undertaking
- Employee Involvement in European Companies (SE) and European Cooperative Societies (SCE)
- Personnel funds
- Key points of the Co-operation Act
- Collective agreements and mediation in labour disputes
- Contractor’s obligations and liability
- Employee’s position if employer becomes insolvent
- Working life development
- Integration of immigrants
- Employment
- Support and compensations
- Employment Bulletin and Employment Service Statistics
- Labour legislation
- Energy
- Energy and climate strategy
- Electricity market
- Natural gas market
- Emissions trading
- Renewable energy
- Energy efficiency
- Energy and Investment Aid
- Nuclear energy
- Security of energy supply
- International and EU cooperation in the energy sector
- Energy technologies
- Competition and consumers
- Regions
Innovation policy evaluation
An exceptional number of reviews have been made on Finland’s innovation policy in recent years. The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development's (OECD) review of Finland’s innovation policy was published in June 2017. It gives a number of recommendations for increased productivity, economic renewal, competence development and improved effectiveness of research. The Ministry of Economic Affairs and Employment and the Ministry of Education and Culture requested the review to get an internationally respected and independent review of the current state of the Finnish research and innovation system and related structural and content-related development needs.
Other reviews are also being carried out. In June 2018, Professor Erkki Ormala was invited to review the sufficiency of the central government research and innovation funding. The Ministry of Economic Affairs and Employment has requested an external independent review of the status and role of VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland in the Finnish research and innovation system. Innovation policy is continuously reviewed as part of other policy processes.
Business Finland will systematically assess the impacts of its measures. It implements a significant part of Finland’s innovation policy measures under the guidance of the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Employment.
The European Commission has published an interim evaluation of the EU’s Research and Innovation Programme Horizon 2020 (2014 to 2020). Horizon 2020 has also been assessed by the High-Level Group on maximising the impact of EU research and innovation programmes. These evaluations will be used in the implementation of the latter part of Horizon 2020 and in the preparations for EU’s next Research and Innovation Programme and other innovation policies.
It is important to review innovation policies to find out how successful and productive they have been and how they and their guidance should be improved. As is the case in all evaluations, it is difficult to prove causal relationships, and there are also other factors influencing innovation beyond the central government’s innovation policy. Despite challenges, it is nevertheless possible to evaluate public policies by using different kinds of methods. Moreover, public policies are such an important factor in promoting innovation and addressing gaps in the system that innovation policy evaluations are always relevant.
Further information:
Lasse Laitinen
lasse.laitinen(at)tem.fi
Related websites
- Support for EU research and innovation policy making
- The role of research and development in fostering economic performance. A survey of the macro-level literature and policy implications for Finland (Pierre Mohnen, Maastricht University and UNU-MERIT)
- OECD Reviews of Innovation Policy: Finland 2017
- OECD Innovation Policy Review of Finland, launching of the final report 9.6.2017
- Discussion 8.2.2017: OECD Review of Finland’s Innovation Policy
- RD Seminar 1.12.2016