Govt adopts action plan to curb grey economy

The government on Thursday adopted a strategy and an action plan for tackling the grey economy and economic crimes for 2020–2023.

The tackling of the grey economy will focus on prevention, more effective access to information and cooperation between authorities, said an official press release.

“More effective measures to combat the grey economy are essential, if we want to guarantee healthy competition between companies and a fair labour market. When we all play by the same rules, we all win in the end,” said Employment Minister Tuula Haatainen, who chairs the government’s steering group on combating the grey economy.

To implement the strategy, an action plan has been drawn up that includes more than 20 projects and more than 50 concrete measures. These projects and measures will be carried out in cooperation between different ministries, agencies and stakeholders.

The government has reserved about EUR 15 million in funding for implementing the 2020–2023 action plan.

“The action plan tackles the grey economy and economic crime in many ways. For example, we are investigating ways of intervening in underpayment observed in labour-intensive sectors such as shipyards, construction sites and restaurants. The fight against corruption will be intensified in public procurement. We also have to clarify issues related to the interface between work carried out under an employment relationship and entrepreneurial work, because of the increasing amount of work in the platform economy and on digital platforms,” said Haatainen.

The objective of the action plan is to intensify cooperation between the authorities and make it more effective in combating, for example, undeclared work, identity theft and food fraud. One way this can be achieved is by creating readymade operating models that the authorities can use across the country.

“Many authorities are going to be cooperating, for example, to prevent and detect the abuse of foreign labour and human trafficking for labour exploitation. We feel that it is important for the success of our work that information sharing between the various authorities proceeds smoothly,” said Interior Minister Maria Ohisalo.

“We will be deploying a number of preventive measures, such as introducing the tax number system in shipbuilding and examining better disclosure of information concerning the due payment of taxes and fees to support the efforts to combat the grey economy. Furthermore, we will target an information campaign at immigrants and individuals at the start of their working career about how responsible employees and employers act,” said Janne Marttinen, director of the Grey Economy Information Unit at the Finnish Tax Administration.