Helsinki — Finland’s far-right Blue-and-Black Movement has been re-registered as an official political party, after collecting the required 5,000 supporter cards, drawing considerable backing from members and candidates of the populist Finns Party, according to an investigation by Helsingin Sanomat.
The National Board of Patents and Registration confirmed the re-registration after the movement submitted 5,819 valid signatures. The list of supporters, made public on Tuesday, revealed significant overlap with established political groups.
The Blue-and-Black Movement was previously removed from the party register after Finland’s Supreme Administrative Court ruled that its programme was incompatible with constitutional principles and human rights law.
Cross-party support, concentrated in the Finns Party
Of those who endorsed the movement, 117 individuals had recently stood as candidates in municipal elections. Sixty-three ran under the Finns Party banner, while six each belonged to the National Coalition Party and the Centre Party.
Nine of them ultimately won seats: five with the Finns Party and two each with the Centre and National Coalition.
Young, male-dominated profile
The investigation also highlighted the demographic profile of the group’s supporters. The largest age cohort was 21–25-year-olds, with 767 signatories, closely followed by the 26–30 bracket with 709. Men accounted for 85 percent of the total.
Party programme and ideology
In its revised programme, the Blue-and-Black Movement advocates for a monolingual Finland and seeks to limit what it calls the “dominance” of foreign languages in society. The party also pledges to protect the Finnish workforce from what it describes as “foreign and external competition.”
Founded in 2021 by former Finns Party members with hardline ethnonationalist views, the movement deliberately invokes the symbolism of the 1930s Lapua Movement, a radical nationalist and fascist organisation outlawed after an attempted coup in 1932. Many Lapua members later joined the Patriotic People’s Movement (IKL), which operated as a parliamentary party until it was banned in 1944 as part of Finland’s armistice agreement with the Soviet Union.