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Prime Minister Petteri Orpo (Kok) tells the business daily Kauppalehti that the government will consider tax breaks for data centres, which he says are "needed in Finland". The PM commissioned a report on how to attract international data centres to the country from former Elisa CEO Veli-Matti Mattila, who submitted the plan on Tuesday. The PM said he broadly agrees with Mattila’s proposed roadmap, which calls for "significant", long-term electricity tax relief for high-value-added data centres. Orpo says that the government will quickly draw up a support model aimed at ensuring such investments in Finland, which could cost nearly 50 million euros annually. Orpo said that data centre investments would give more momentum to nuclear power investments in Finland. "Wind power alone is not enough, we also need base power, regulating power and flexibility," he told KL. IS: An Italian aggravated by Finnish bureaucracy The tabloid Ilta-Sanomat has a feature on Paco Nucci, an Italian restaurateur who lives in Kuopio, eastern Finland, and his frustration with Finnish bureaucracy. Nucci, who has lived in Finland for 34 years, has nine children and two siblings here. The Neapolitan speaks Finnish fluently, even winning a competition for speaking the Savo dialect. Nucci runs four Italian restaurants which employ 40 people. Nucci applied for citizenship two years ago. Last month, the Finnish Immigration Service (Migri) told his lawyer that his application may not be processed until next July. The agency cites a backlog in processing citizenship applications, partly due to a large number of applications from asylum seekers who arrived as part of a large influx in 2015, who may now be eligible for Finnish passports. Nucci says he’s considering an "escape to Sweden" because of what he sees as unfair treatment by officialdom, pointing out that others, including his former chef and his own sister, obtained citizenship much more quickly. AL: Smelly cat leaves its mark on a Tampere flat In Tampere, a former tenant has been ordered by the Consumer Disputes Board to pay more than 9,150 euros in repair costs for damage to an apartment caused by a cat, reports the local daily Aamulehti. The tenant lived in a two-room flat for almost a year. After the lease ended, the landlord had the apartment renovated due to alleged mould damage and sent the tenant an invoice. Moisture measurements revealed that there were no abnormal surface moisture readings in the apartment's structures. However, the decision states that the odour in the apartment was caused by urine stains left by the tenant's cat. According to an inspection report, there was a strong smell of cat pee through most of the apartment, with floors and some lower wall panels discoloured by urine. Inspectors recommended that the floor be dismantled and completely rebuilt. As a result, the board fully backed the landlord's right to compensation.
