Nearly Half of Finland Believes Government Will Fall Before Term Ends - Poll

The government, which has taken several months to assemble, harbors divergent views on various issues ranging from fiscal policies and immigration to the EU and the status of the Swedish language.

Nearly half of Finns believe Prime Minister Petteri Orpo's newly-minted coalition government will fall before it reaches the end of its four-year term, a recent survey has found.

The study, carried out by pollster Tietoykkonen, found that a full 49 percent of respondents don't think the Orpo government will make it to the end of its term, while barely 28 percent said they think it will.

Political science professor Ilkka Ruostetsaari of Tampere University said that the survey's results indicate that people's faith in the government's longevity is not very strong.

What Pitfalls Will the New Government Have to Navigate Around?

Finland's new four-party government emerged as a result of the general election in April after several months of talks and distributed minister portfolios barely a week ago in mid-June.

There are several reasons why Finns believe the alliance between the liberal-conservative National Coalition Party (NCP, the formal winner of the election), the nationalist Finns Party, the Christian Democrats and the local Swedish People's Party of Finland may be short-lived.

First off, the NCP and the Finns, the new government's heavyweights, profoundly differ in their attitudes toward the EU. While the NCP has traditionally been strongly pro-Brussels in nearly all matters, the Finns have been consistent and hardline Euroskeptics.

Second, while both parties often are labeled conservative, they stick to different brands of conservatism. Orpo's NCP ran as fiscal conservatives, with pledges to improve the Finnish economy and limit the country's ballooning debt. Given that, the party is betting on targeted cuts in benefits, welfare and healthcare to achieve its goals. The Finns' conservatism, on the other hand, is more about values. Economically, the party has been even labeled left-wing, with its top representatives, including former leader Timo Soini calling it a "workers' party without socialism."

Third is the attitude toward immigration. While the rest of the government is in favor of immigration to boost the country's faltering labor market and prop up Finland's ailing demographics, the Finns seek to limit the quota on refugees, tighten the conditions for family unification and stop using public funds to promote multiculturalism. However, with numerous government agencies stressing the need for higher immigration to sustain the current standards of living and industry amid a protracted slump in birthrates, this may be a tall order.

Lastly, the Swedish People's Party (SPP) has traditionally been at odds with the nationalist Finns Party over several issues, including the role of the Swedish language in Finland, which despite being the mother tongue of some 5 percent of the population nevertheless enjoys official status across the entire Nordic country. The Finns have campaigned for removing what they refer to as "forced Swedish." SPP head Anna-Maja Henriksson admitted the tensions and even said she was "somewhat surprised" that her party had ended up joining the coalition after all.

That said, some unlikely alliances in Northern Europe have emerged as of late. Among them, Denmark is currently ruled by a coalition of historic archenemies: the Social Democrats and the Liberals, with the differences bridged by the newly-founded Moderate Party functioning as a mediator.