Southern Häme municipalities tackle employment issues at SeutuSummit

Riihimäki, Janakkala, Loppi and Hausjärvi, which have agreed on vitality cooperation, will gather for their second SeutuSummit meeting on the 26th of August 2025, at the new school center Valo in Tervakoski.

This time the theme of the meeting is employment and integration services. The municipalities form a joint South Häme employment area (EHTA), which was one of the impetuses for the emergence of vitality cooperation. The meeting will review the experiences of the employment area's early stages and, above all, the future and the economy.

The event will feature researcher and employment expert Mikko Kesä as a guest. He states that municipalities are currently facing a tight spot. Few municipalities have been able to prepare financially for the rapidly increasing unemployment and fines.

He has a clear message for employment areas.

– The development of employment areas must not remain in the reform that has now been implemented. It is not enough for an employment area to handle the statutory obligations transferred from the state. In addition to handling these tasks, it should be an enabler, with the support of which municipalities can invest in their own voluntary services tailored to the needs of their own residents. Municipalities need room for maneuver and authority to genuinely manage employment and vitality. This of course also requires the development of regulations and securing funding at the national level, but it is still important to remember that municipalities already have a lot in their own hands to decide and do things themselves in the way they want, Kesä says.

The South Häme employment area is in the process of renewing the cooperation agreement between municipalities so that some of the costs are distributed based on the cause of the problem instead of a percentage.

– In the new draft agreement, the costs of using services are allocated to the municipality where the employment area customer is from. At the SeutuSummit meeting, we will discuss both the agreement and the employment area's budget for next year, says Employment Director Pekka Voutilainen.

The actual budget proposal is prepared by the municipalities' joint employment division.

– Better employment than today can be achieved through a strong business community. For this reason, employment and business community go hand in hand. Cooperation between municipalities will be strengthened next year when we begin to implement the regional agreement in practice. The goal is a thousand new jobs by 2030. We will succeed in this, says Riikka Moilanen, Mayor of Janakkala, which is organizing SeutuSummit this time.

SeutuSummit will bring together approximately 40 municipal leaders and decision-makers from municipal and city governments and council presidencies.

The joint regional economic cooperation between the city of Riihimäki and the municipalities of Hausjärvi, Janakkala and Loppi will start at the beginning of 2026. The aim of the cooperation is to implement two significant investments in the region annually and create a thousand new jobs by 2030. In addition, the municipalities will intensify cooperation in planning and land use and create joint business areas in the region.