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.

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.