Pitkä tie perustuslakiuudistukseen

Författare

• Jaakko Nousiainen

Abstract

The project to reform the Finnish Constitution was started thirty years ago, in the radical atmosphere of the late sixties and early seventies. No consensus was reached at that time, but the idea of the reform survived. In the first phase several minor adjustments were carried out, but since the end of the 1980s parliament has insisted on strengthening the parliamentary system vis-à-vis presidential power. A resolution adopted in 1994 assigned the Government the task of launching a wholesale revision of entire Constitution. As the range of the reform was restricted, the preparatory work was entrusted to a working group of constitutional scholars and civil servants, who shaped the structure of the new Constitution and pointed out the considerable problems to be solved. On the basis of this a commission composed of parliamentarians put the finishing touches to the draft Constitution over a period of seventeen months. The government proposal was passed almost unanimously in Parliament, and the President of the Republic confirmed it into force on 1 March 2000.