The 8th Congress has held on May 22-23, 2015 at the University of Helsinki. The total number of paricipants was 145 delegates and 52 observers, representing 139 member organizations in 21 nations. The invitation was sent to 519 member organizations. That number represents about a third of all existing expatriate organizations. The Canadian delegation to the Congress consisted of eight delegates, representing Canada in six working committees.
The preliminary program consisted of “Suomi 2017” with over 100 participants, Senior seminar with nearly 80 and Suomi-koulu seminar with about 40 partakers.
A total of 54 initiatives were submitted, but due to duplication the final number was reduced to 41. They were debated in eight reorganized sub-committees, namely Political and Official matters, Citizenship, Senior, Social, Education I, Education II, Culture + Information and Finance and Rules working committees. All 41 initiatives were accepted, although most of them were amended either by the sub-committees or the Congress itself.
The final forms of the initiatives have been sent for translation into Swedish and English. The minutes, participant lists and the initiatives will be distributed to all member organizations and participants will be distributed two months after the conclusion of the Congress.

The two most important initiatives were to
1. Implement mail voting in national elections for expatriate Finns by updating the legislation concerning voting, and by allocating the necessary funding, in expedient fashion, as required by the unanimous support by all concerned.
2. Secure the functioning of the Finnish Expatriate Parliament by making the organization a legal entity in Finland.
The following three initiatives in addition to the previous two will form the focus of USP / FEP work during the next term:
3. Update the Finnish Government’s Expatriate Finn Policy 2012-2016 so that it will be ready for implementation by 2017 in all aspects of the policy.
4. Continue the support of Suomi-koulut so that the education, language and culture instruction will continue by increasing the support permanently by having its own budget line
5. Support and develop the work of expatriate clubs with the goal of improving the cooperation by existing and new clubs with Suomi-Seura, Finland’s political representation, and both cultural and scientific institutions, and that the Ministry of Culture and Education will continue to support Suomi-Seura ry in order to maintain its functioning.
The following initiatives were also of interest:
6. Look at the possibility of establishing expatriate ridings in the Parliamentary elections.
7. Study of the obstacles and limitations to Expatriate Finns moving back to Finland.
8. Present the declaration of the Rights of the Elderly to the United Nations.
9. Simplify the process of informing Finland of citizenship in another country.
10. Reduce the fee for obtaining a passport abroad to the same level as in Finland.
11. Passport renewal on the net to be made possible also for Expatriate Finns.
12. Increase the duration of the Finnish passport to 10 years.
13. The unused months left on a passport to be added to the new passport, up to six months.
14. Expatriate Flag Day to be celebrated on August 5, also marked in the Finnish calendar.
15. Taxation of expatriates’ summer jobs to be brought into line with taxation of Finnish residents.
16. Suomi-koulu students less the three years of age to be funded. VN June 2015

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