I could easily answer your question about the foreign population in Finland. The foreign population in Finland is 90,000 out of 5 million people. Out of the 90,000, half are mostly from Russia or ex-Soviet Union countries. They are more or less coming for love; they come to marry. Usually, it's Russian ladies and Finnish men--that's the combination.
But we don't yet have a policy about how to actively recruit. We don't have traditions. We are looking to the neighbouring countries at the moment, which means the Russians, the Estonians, the Baltic States. Those have the most potential. We have an economic gap between the possibilities and prosperity of Finland and the potentials and challenges they have in those countries.
Estonia is a marvellous example. Their language and culture are the closest to ours. Their economy is thriving, and there are only one million citizens. We can expect to have tens of thousands of people coming from there. But even if they came, they wouldn't stay. They might come to work for five days and go home every weekend. It takes 18 minutes to fly from Helsinki to Tallinn by helicopter.
We actually don't have countries that are close to us. Therefore, we have to look in every single other country in the world. The only country in the European Union at the moment that has a surplus population is Poland. Every other country is losing population. Italy and Finland are losing population the fastest because of the aging population. In Poland, they don't have educated and trained people. Because of the previous systems and the legacy of communism, they have surplus population in the countryside. They're a very Catholic population, and this actually saved the country. But their surplus population is not trained and educated for the challenges of the future.
So we go to Asia, like everybody else. I'll give you an example. Germany tried to recruit about 6,000 engineers for their companies. They couldn't get more than 2,000 to come to Germany, which is a very attractive country--language, culture, well-based. They got only 2,000. Finland, which as I said is in a very remote corner of the European Union, is a very nice, functioning, safe society, but it doesn't have a similar kind of network that would assist them in coming here.
I'm saying there are political consequences, because we do not have a tradition. There are always parties and politicians who are saying.... For instance, I come from the northern-most constituency of Finland, which has an unemployment rate of 18%. If I say that I need to have 1,000 foreign workers come from Asia to Lapland, it's over for me.