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Tuesday's papers: Espoo explosion, payday loan lawsuit and EU bailouts

Borrowers may sue payday lenders in a class action lawsuit.

Kännykällä haetaan pikavippiä.
People who borrowed from payday lenders could find a resolution through a class action lawsuit. Image: Henrietta Hassinen / Yle
Yle News

The websites of most media (including Yle) in Finland lead with news of an explosion during a police operation in Espoo. One person was later found dead in an apartment, and two police officers were taken to hospital after suffering injuries.

Their condition was not serious and they were discharged on Monday evening.

The explosion happened at 8:30pm in the Mäkkylä neighbourhood, reports HS, when police arrived at what they described as a 'routine' callout.

There were no suspected links to organised crime, according to HS.

Other papers also had stories, including Ilta-Sanomat, which spoke to some residents of the apartment block that had been evacuated to a hotel while police continued their search.

One of them, Veikko, said that he'd been told to board a bus to go somewhere, but he didn't know where. Worse, he'd been asked to leave his dog behind.

Police later relented and said evacuees could bring their dogs with them to the hotel.

Payday lenders still in talks

Last autumn the Finnish Consumer Complaints Authority (FCCA) asked for borrowers to come forward to join a possible class action lawsuit against two payday lenders, Euro24 finance and J.W. Yhtiöt, which offered extremely high-cost loans to people with few other options.

Since then they have been locked in talks, reports Turun Sanomat, with a couple of bailiff firms also joining the negotiations. They have purchased debts from the lenders.

Some 1,549 people joined the action last autumn, and more have added their names since then. The final figure will only be known if and when legal action is initiated.

TS reports that talks are progressing slowly, and might last until the autumn. If they fail and the FCCA brings legal action, it would be the first such lawsuit brought in Finland.

The legislation allowing class action lawsuits was brought in ten years ago, but the closest Finland has come to a joint lawsuit was in 2016 when the electricity firm Caruna settled out of court after raising transmission charges by between 22 and 27 percent.

EU bailout debate

Business daily Kauppalehti takes a look in its editorial at Finland's stance on EU bailout measures.

Last week German chancellor Angela Merkel and France President Emmanuel Macron announced they had agreed a deal to establish a 500-billion-euro fund to support crisis-hit regions of the EU.

In practice this means richer regions and states funding poorer ones, and has been opposed by the so-called 'frugal four' EU countries: Denmark, Austria, Sweden and the Netherlands.

Finland has been absent from media descriptions of that group, and during the weekend's Kultaranta Talks Prime Minister Sanna Marin said that she would try to avoid being grouped with any 'block' on this issue.

That contrasted with President Sauli Niinistö's desire, announced on Friday, for the EU to return to a 'no bailout' principle.

Marin also emphasised Parliament's role in deciding the matter, touching on the division of powers in the Finnish system which limits the president to foreign relations and his role as Commander-in-Chief of the Defence Forces.

The EU, meanwhile, is Marin's domain and she has said she will respond constructively to the Merkel-Macron proposal — but she would have to get any policy past Parliament, which keeps a close eye on Finland's EU commitments.

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