Language Report discusses realisation of linguistic rights
Today the Government decided in its plenary session to submit to Parliament the Government Report on the Application of Language Legislation in 2025. The report provides important monitoring data on the current state of Finland’s national languages and other indigenous languages and on the realisation of linguistic rights.
In addition to the current state of Finland’s national languages, the 2025 Language Report focuses on themes such as digitalisation, realisation of linguistic rights in the judiciary, functioning of bilingual wellbeing services counties, and rights of sign language users. Key sources include statistical data, the Ministry of Justice barometers that monitor linguistic rights, reports by the highest overseers of legality, assessments by language communities, and monitoring by ministries regarding the developments in their respective branches of government.
During this government term, linguistic rights are promoted by continuing the implementation of measures under the Strategy for the National Languages of Finland and the Language Policy Programme, which were adopted as government resolutions in the previous term.
Highlights from the Language Report
Digitalisation is increasing across society, including in public services. Technological and AI developments can help safeguard linguistic rights but may also undermine their practical realisation. For example, new services and systems often fail to take languages other than Finnish into account.
Recruiting sufficient bilingual staff remains a challenge for Swedish-language services in courts. The share of criminal cases handled in Swedish has been declining for some time, and Swedish speakers appear to be giving up their right to use their own language in court. However, efforts have been made to improve Swedish-language court services.
Challenges in Swedish-language public services extend to healthcare and social welfare. The overall linguistic impact of Finland’s health and social services reform cannot yet be assessed, but there are difficulties particularly in providing Swedish-language services for persons with disabilities.
While Finnish remains the most widely used language across sectors of society, the growing use of English has affected the status of Finland’s national languages. In general, the spread of English has had a more negative impact on Swedish-language than Finnish-language services. For Finnish, the effects are most visible in higher education. To address the shortcomings observed in Finnish and Swedish skills, the number of lessons in students’ first language and literature has been increased in primary and lower secondary education. Lower secondary schools have also increased the teaching of the second national language (Finnish or Swedish, depending on the student’s first language).
Additional resources have been directed to the teaching of the Sami languages, and the number of students receiving instruction in Sami has increased. However, there is still room for improvement in the realisation of Sami linguistic rights in public services, including awareness and attitudes among the authorities.
Children and young people whose first language is a sign language often receive both early childhood education and care and school education with the help of interpreters or sign language assistants. Providing education in sign language is difficult due to the small number of students and teachers. Sign languages are still often seen as a communication aid rather than a language. Although challenges remain in interpretation and access to information, authorities have improved how they take sign languages into account in their work.
Steps have been taken to revitalise Romani and Karelian, and revival programmes have been published for both languages.
The Language Report, drawn up once per parliamentary term under the Language Act, provides information on the structures that support linguistic rights, the impact of administrative changes on language communities and how linguistic rights have been realised since the previous report. In addition to Finnish and Swedish, the report covers Sami languages, sign languages, Romani and Karelian.
Inquiries:
Jasmiina Jokinen, Ministerial Adviser, tel. +358 295 150 056, [email protected]
Government report on application of language legislation 2025 (in Finnish)