The European Council adopted a Strategy for Growth and Employment in 2010. The vision of the Europe 2020 Strategy, which extends to 2020, is smart, sustainable and inclusive economic growth. The strategy sets EU-wide targets for employment, research and development expenditure, climate measures, education and reducing poverty. Each Member State sets its own national targets in accordance with the programme.

As part of its national targets, Finland aims to raise the employment rate of 20–64 year-olds to 78%, spend a minimum of 4% of GDP on R&D, achieve the climate and energy targets agreed in the EU, maintain the proportion of 30–34 year-olds having completed tertiary-level education at 42%, reduce the proportion of 18–24 year-old early school leavers to 8%, and reduce the number of people living at risk of poverty and social exclusion.

The European Council adopts for all Member States recommendations aimed at guiding national decision making so that it supports growth and employment. In 2018, the focus in the recommendations for Finland is on ensuring the sustainability of general government finances, improving the cost-effectiveness of social and health care services, improving the incentives to accept work while ensuring adequate and well-integrated services for the unemployed and the inactive, and strengthening the monitoring of household debt.

The Government is now presenting the eleventh Europe 2020 National Reform Programme. The programme describes the measures that the Government has initiated to achieve the national targets and how Finland has reacted to the recommendations issued by the EU. The information provided in the programme will serve as a basis for a more detailed examination of Finland’s situation at the EU level.