Tour of the Parliament of Finland

• Tour of the Parliament of Finland

Oh, "politota", well, not my topic. I only loosely imagine how the Parliament, including our Russian, so, for the preparation of this post had yet to read the Internet, which would be a little bit in the subject. Prior to this, I have been only in the State Duma, and is not at the meetings, but just visiting a friend's deputy and without excursions. For that, during a recent press tour in Helsinki, I was invited to tour the Finnish Parliament. Now I've got friends among Finnish deputies

The Houses of Parliament (Eduskunta), built in 1931, designed by Johan Siegfried Siren.

The building was built in the classical style of the 20s of the last century, with elements of functionalism and art deco.

JS Sirén, except the project of the building, as well has designed some of the interior, furniture and lighting elements in the basic premises of the Parliament.

The plenary sessions of the Parliament are free to attend everyone. The building of the Parliament as well organizes regular outings. For example, a school trip.

The interior reflects the peculiarities of the structure of the Parliament: Each floor has its own character, depending on the functions located there spaces and offices. The Finnish Parliament has even rooms where only women work. In 1907, Finnish women were the first cars worldwide to receive full political rights.

One of the most interesting artifacts of the Finnish Parliament - lift, which consists of an unbroken chain of cabins, moving without stopping. No need to call, press the button and wait for the floor: jumped into the cab and jumped on the desired floor. Elevator running from the date of opening of the building, that is, for more than 80 years.

The left side always moves upwards, the right - down. Feel like Super Mario is not allowed: for safety elevator allowed to use only the employees of the Parliament. For everyone else, there are the usual conventional elevators.

The Houses of Parliament expanded in 1970, 1980.

new building in high-tech style was built in 2004 next to the old building it is connected by an underground passageway.

But it is the main meeting room.

Most attracted me here, this is one of 5 sculptures. Yes, it is in the center, and shamelessly shows MPs can see what part of the body itself. But most importantly it is a child, smiling and gave them all the greetings. A mother symbolizes the past, the child - the future, and thus the sculpture as it alludes to the audience for whom and what they are taking certain important decisions. Sculpture after his appearance in the boardroom dispute triggered mass, but in the end they decided to leave it at that. Democracy.

"Yes", "No", "abstain", "absent".

The Finnish Parliament is unicameral (it is bicameral in Russia, consisting of the State Duma and the Federation Council).

Parliamentary elections are held every 4 years and they elected 200 deputies. Every Finnish citizen who turned 18 years of age may be elected deputy and to have a voice in Parliament.

In Finland, it is now registered 19 parties, 8 of which are present in the Parliament. The multi-party system exists in Finland for nearly 100 years.

All the decisions, minutes of meetings, their results and other relevant information can be found on the website of the Parliament. There you can find a variety of financial information. Here, for example MP salary in 2012 reached 6335 Euros per month, Speaker earn up to 11 675 euro per month. By the way, in spite of such wages, most of the deputies go to work on foot or by bicycle, however, they live mainly in the center. A flasher in Finland is only for emergency, police and firefighters. Well, even the president during what some official meetings uses support. Our example would have to take.

But conversely, I perked up, because we are now show the same underground passage between the old and the new building!

In the lower tiers of all sorts of unusual paintings and sculptures. And just in the Parliament is a collection of more than 1,000 works of art.

Underground space the center of Helsinki, in principle, very well mastered: in addition to the underground there are still huge parking space, shops and figs knows what else. Stone ground allows. So, this is just one more underground passage. Straight, light and pictures. Some staff travel on it on scooters. My altiimetr hours showed the depth of something around 15 meters below the surface.