Attorney general Tuomas Pöysti has warned the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of its practice of asking local workers to carry out tasks that should be reserved for officials employed in Finland by law.
According to the ministry, the practice was due to a lack of staff.
According to Finnish law, employees have a different legal status than civil servants.
The decision is related to a complaint concerning the Finnish embassies in the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa and the Turkish capital Ankara. The complainant claims to have worked as a local employee and to have participated in interviews and DNA sampling in 2018 and 2019.
The complaint states that the practice was a long-term and well-established practice in the Finnish embassies. The complainant said that the right to reside in Ankara was being investigated by a Turkish national who was not a dual national.
The ministry blames staff shortages
The ministry’s statement to the chancellor of justice says that there were not enough officials to perform these duties without causing unreasonable delays in processing visas.
For this reason, locally hired Finnish staff were used for these tasks. However, the Ministry claims that they received appropriate training to carry out their duties and were properly supervised during their performance.
In his decision, the Chancellor of Justice noted that the ministry’s practices were not legally justified and asked the ministry to explain how it intended to change its practices. The deadline for settlement is the end of June.
Source: The Nordic Page