There are distinct official publications for primary/secondary legislation (Suomen säädöskokoelma/Finlands författningssamling) and for legal notices, ministerial circulars and other official texts (Virallinen lehti/Officiella tidningen); see point 1.2 for details.
First edition
Publishing of statutes started in Finland in 1808, and since 1860 all statutes exist in Finnish and Swedish. The Treaty series was established in 1933.
Statutes concerning the interests of the Sami people have been published in Sami since 1991 (approximately 5 to 10 acts or decrees annually).
Part I: Suomen säädöskokoelma/Finlands författningssamling (Statutes of Finland, national legislation):
Acts of parliament;
Decrees of the President of the Republic, of the government and of the ministries;
The state budget, supplementary budgets and parliamentary decisions on state finances;
Rules of procedure of the parliament and other rules and instructions related to the organisation of parliamentary work or for the bodies elected by the parliament.
Part II: Suomen säädöskokoelman sopimussarja/Finlands författningssamling fördragsserie (Treaty series):
International treaties, both bilateral and multilateral; the reservations, explanations and notices that Finland has made in respect of treaties;
Decisions to terminate a treaty or to interrupt the application or implementation of a treaty;
In the context of treaties, also their implementing acts and decrees.
Legal basis
The legal basis for publication is the Finnish Constitution, Section 79 (11.6.1999/731) and Act 188 of 25 February 2000 (25.2.2000/188) — ‘Act on the Statutes of Finland’.
Legally binding
The online edition as of 1 January 2010
Financing
Publication of the legal gazette is financed through the state budget.
Other gazettes
Apart from the Suomen säädöskokoelma/Finlands författningssamling (legal gazette), there is one main official gazette: Virallinen lehti/Officiella tidningen, published by Edita Ltd (https://www.virallinenlehti.fi/fi/journal/list).
The official gazette contains all kinds of official notices and other legal announcements based on laws (around 50): public executory sales, mergers, degradations of capital stock, temporary suspensions of payments and collections, guardianships and announcements. Existing since 1819, it is currently published twice per week.
Several search functions in the database with HTML files
Hyperlinks to other related acts, government bills and EU legislation
Format description
PDF
HTML
XHTML
RDF (in the separate open data service data.finlex.fi )
Authenticity
The authenticity of the texts online is protected with a secure https server.
Archiving
The online publisher, Edita Ltd, is in charge of archiving. A law on electronic archiving is in progress, but there is already an order (secondary legislation) on the standards of electronic archiving.
Oikeusministeriö/Justitieministeriet
(Ministry of Justice) For contact details, please refer to point 1.1
Form and nature
Ministry
Basic tasks
Pre-press: no
Printing: no
Dissemination/distribution: no
Legal gazette online: yes
Legislation database: yes
Consolidation: yes
NB: A private company (Edita Publishing Ltd) owned by the Ministry of Finance is the contractor responsible for pre-press, the legal gazette online and dissemination/distribution.
For the electronic legislative procedure a special workflow and document processing system (government decisionmaking system) is used
The same system applies for primary and secondary legislation
Microsoft Word templates containing tailor-made macros and templates are used. These templates are converted to XML further to FrameMaker. These formats are then converted into HTML and PDF for online publishing
Workflow
Government decisionmaking system is used, from drafting to publishing, as a single electronic workflow system (see above).
Publishing
Staff of the ministries and the contractor proofread texts to be published
The minimum period between the reception of the draft by publisher Edita Ltd and the availability of the published text is between 3 to 5 days
