The municipalities of southern Häme are addressing employment issues at the SeutuSummit meeting

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

This time, the theme of the meeting will be employment and integration services. The municipalities form a joint South Häme employment area (EHTA), which was one of the driving forces behind the establishment of the vitality cooperation. The meeting will review the initial experiences of EHTA, and above all, its future and economy.

Guest speaker at the event will be researcher and employment expert Mikko Kesä. He notes that municipalities are currently facing a tough situation. Few municipalities have been able to prepare financially for the rapid increase in unemployment and penalty payments.
He has a clear message for the employment areas.

– The development of employment areas must not stop at the current reform. It is not enough for the employment area to handle the statutory obligations transferred from the state. In addition to fulfilling these tasks, it should be an enabler that allows municipalities to invest in their own voluntary services tailored to the needs of their residents. Municipalities need room to maneuver and authority to genuinely manage employment and vitality. Of course, this 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 in the way they want, Kesä says.

EHTA is indeed reforming the inter-municipal cooperation agreement so that some of the costs will be shared based on causation rather than by percentage.

– In the new draft agreement, the costs of using services will be allocated to the municipality from which the customer of the employment area comes. Discussions will be held at SeutuSummit regarding both the agreement and EHTA’s budget for next year, says employment director Pekka Voutilainen.

The actual budget proposal will be made by the joint employment committee of the municipalities.

– Improved employment can be achieved through a strong business sector. For this reason, employment and business life go hand in hand. Cooperation between municipalities will be strengthened next year when we start practically implementing the regional agreement. The goal is to create 1 000 new jobs by 2030. We will succeed in this, says the chief executive of Janakkala, which is organizing the SeutuSummit this time, Riikka Moilanen.

About 40 municipal leaders and decision-makers from municipal and city councils, as well as chairpersons of councils, will gather at the SeutuSummit.

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

In the picture (from the left) are the chief executives of Loppi, Mikko Salmela; Hausjärvi, Pekka Määttänen; Riihimäki, Jouni Eho; and Janakkala, Riikka Moilanen.