On Thursday, 20 October 2016, The Parliament was
given a Government’s proposal on the changes in the Unemployment Security Act, where
it is aimed for finding work more quickly and making unemployment periods
shorter. It is intented to meet the goal, for example, by making tighter
obligations for unemployed persons to seek and accept work that is offered and
to participate in the offered employment promotion measures also when it is not
agreed on in the employment plan with the TE office. A refusal could lead to
losing the unemployment allowance for a certain time period.

It is included in the proposal also that there
would be a change in the Unemployment Security Act that persons receiving
unemployment allowance would be even more obliged to seek and accept full-time
work. In the future, people receiving unemployment allowance should accept
full-time work even if the salary was less than his/her current unemployment
allowance. Refusing to do such work might lead to losing unemployment allowance
temporarily.

For more information
on the proposal, please see the bulletin of the Ministry of Economic Affairs
and Employment. You can see the whole
proposal on the website of the Parliament in the most current legislation
proposals (proposal number 210/2016). Unfortunately, the
both texts are only available in Finnish and Swedish at the moment.