The CEO of retail giant S Group sounds an alarm over rising overseas package deliveries and their impact on Finnish retailers and tax revenue, Uusi Suomi reports.
"The parcel rally, especially from China, is accelerating. It is forecast that the number of orders this year could reach 50 million packages," Hannu Krook wrote on S Group’s website.
Krook warns that the market operates under double standards, with minimal oversight of legal requirements for overseas sellers. Domestic companies must ensure product safety and conduct audits, which increases their costs and gives third-country e-commerce operators a competitive advantage.
He also points out that Finnish retailers are bound by producer responsibility, which requires them to manage the recycling and disposal of imported materials responsibly.
The S group exec wrote that Chinese online shopping has a significant impact on tax revenue and the Finnish economy.
"If purchases from third countries had been made through domestic e-commerce platforms, our tax revenue would have been 11 times higher than what the state has received so far," Krook adds, hoping that legislative changes in Finland and the EU will address these issues.
Iltalehti recently reported that Finland’s Safety and Chemicals Agency (Tukes) has warned against using a backpack sold on the popular Chinese shopping platform Temu due to unsafe levels of phthalates and chlorinated paraffins. Earlier this week, Tukes issued a similar warning for a jump-rope sold on Temu.
Who fixes your broken tap?
Helsingin Sanomat examined repair responsibilities in housing companies and found it can often be unclear which tasks fall to the housing company and which to apartment owners.
HS reports that the Housing Companies Act generally defines the division of responsibility — shareholders maintain the interiors of their apartments, while the housing company is responsible for the building’s structures and insulation.
The housing company is also responsible for systems related to heating, water, electricity and ventilation, although exceptions can be specified in the company’s terms.
Kristel Pynnönen Andersson, senior legal expert at the Finnish Real Estate Management Federation, said inquiries they receive often reveal common areas of confusion.
Cleaning of the floor drain is one such topic, Pynnönen Andersson notes. While residents used to handle clogged drains, the rules have become more nuanced. They are now responsible for preventing hair and trash from entering the drain and for clearing minor clogs that don’t require tools, such as with a chemical drain cleaner.
"But if the clog is such that the drain needs to be disassembled with tools, that is no longer the resident’s responsibility, because there is a risk of damaging parts. For many people, it is unclear where the line is drawn and what the shareholder or resident must handle themselves,” Pynnönen Andersson says.
It is also the shareholder’s duty to notify the housing company of defects. Pynnönen Andersson notes that while some residents neglect basic maintenance, some DIY-happy residents, often former homeowners, may dismantle sinks or fix pipes a little too eagerly, which can create further problems.
Another risk involves ventilation ducts, which are the housing company’s responsibility. Residents may not realise that tampering with one apartment’s system can affect the entire building.
To make things clearer, experts from the Finnish Real Estate Federation have created guides that explain which maintenance and repair tasks are the responsibility of shareholders and which belong to the housing company.
The HS article includes a quiz to help readers check their knowledge of repair responsibilities.
Panda update
Finland's once beloved pandas Lumi and Pyry, formerly housed together at Ähtäri Zoo, are now living separately in China, reports MTV Uutiset.
The pandas, gifted to Finland by China as part of foreign policy exchanges, were returned to China eight years ahead of schedule in autumn 2024. Since then, there has been little news about them.
Last November, Ähtäri Zoo shared a video showing the pandas spending time in quarantine at the Beichuan Panda Centre. When Helsingin Sanomat tried to see the pandas this year, they could not be traced.
MTV Uutiset reports that uncertainty over Lumi and Pyry’s whereabouts and wellbeing has raised concerns among those who interacted with the pandas in Finland. This week, the outlet contacted Finland’s embassy in Beijing, which requested information from China’s National Forestry and Grassland Administration.
Janna Laine, a communications and public diplomacy officer at the embassy, relayed the agency’s response by email a few days later.
"The agency reports that Lumi and Pyry are healthy, active and eating normally," Laine wrote.
Last year, All Points North explored the role the giant pandas have played in legal proceedings, Finnish diplomatic relations, and Chinese foreign policy.
According to the forestry agency, Lumi is currently at the Shenshuping Panda Centre in Sichuan Province in a care area closed to the public, while Pyry is in a similar restricted zone at the Dujiangyan Centre, a few dozen kilometres away.
As part of their care, the pandas are regularly rotated between publicly visible and closed-off areas.
