By Norbert Tóth
In April 2025, it was announced that Finnair, the majority state-owned Finnish airline, would depart from its previous practice and henceforth provide onboard passenger announcements only in Finnish and English, but not in Swedish. According to the company, the decision was allegedly based on passenger surveys. Traditionally, Finland has two so-called national (official) languages: Finnish and Swedish. This raises the question: could this corporate decision have human rights or minority rights implications? While the matter undoubtedly warrants analysis under Finnish domestic law as well, the present discussion is limited to the perspectives of international law and EU law.
Some Personal Thoughts
I am not entirely sure I am the most authentic person to write about this issue. At the same time, my partial outsider status may actually be an advantage, since I am not burdened by emotional baggage. That said, this is not entirely true. It may not be widely known in Finland, but in Hungary, the topic of Finno-Ugric linguistic kinship is part of the national curriculum: every schoolchild learns some of the most well-known shared vocabulary items, such as vesi–víz (water), sarvi–szarv (horn), käsi–kéz (hand), voi–vaj (butter), jää–jég (ice), pää–fej (head), silma–szem (eye), and so on.
Not unrelated to this linguistic kinship, numerous Hungarian settlements have twin towns in Finland, and there is particularly intense cooperation between the Lutheran churches and schools of the two countries. In short, as a Hungarian, one has never been indifferent to matters concerning Finland. This is also why I was deeply affected, and even experienced a strong sense of guilt (although personally I had nothing to do with it), when a few years ago Hungary temporarily blocked Finland’s (and Sweden’s) accession to NATO.
There is much about Finland that may be attractive to Hungary, and one such aspect is undoubtedly the country’s approach to language, in particular, its bilingualism. I have always found it admirable, and indeed it makes Finland somewhat unique, that the state, including many of its municipalities, is officially bilingual, as both Finnish and Swedish are national languages. Even more striking is that the Swedish spoken in Finland is not just Swedish in general, but a specific dialect called finlandssvenska, spoken as a native language by nearly 300,000 Finns. In my view, like every language, Swedish as spoken in Finland is a protected cultural asset in its own right, part of the shared cultural heritage of humankind, as recognised, for instance, by UNESCO’s 2005 Convention on the Protection and Promotion of the Diversity of Cultural Expressions (see in particular Article 4 paragraph 1 of the Convention in light of its 2nd and 14th preambular paragraphs).
In any case, bilingualism or multilingualism might bring numerous advantages, I believe: it strengthens both legal and de facto equality among citizens, thereby raising the general level of human rights protection within a country. It also increases social cohesion, enhances the country’s appeal to foreign investment,1 and improves citizens’ linguistic competence, as it is well known that those who are bilingual find it much easier to learn a third, a fourth language, and so on. These are just a few of the many possible positive outcomes.
Of course, Finland is not alone in the world, not even in Europe, when it comes to its bilingual (or multilingual) character. Switzerland, Belgium, Bosnia-Herzegovina, the Republic of Ireland, Malta, and Luxembourg can all be mentioned as examples. There are, of course, some special cases in Europe that unfortunately cannot be regarded as success stories in this respect (e.g., Cyprus, Kosovo), because the coexistence of linguistic communities is accompanied by profound societal and political challenges. Yet overall, official (in the legal sense) bilingualism or multilingualism tends to be more of an asset than a liability for a country, which is precisely one of the reasons why Finnair’s decision came as a surprise to me.
On the Legal Environment
I believe this situation falls under the scope of the regulatory field known as Business and Human Rights. The core idea of this field is that market actors, such as corporations, must respect human rights and actively contribute to their realisation. After a long process, the “Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights: Implementing the United Nations ‘Protect, Respect and Remedy’ Framework” (hereafter: the Guiding Principles) were adopted in 2011 and endorsed in the same year by the UN Human Rights Council. While the Guiding Principles do not constitute a legally binding international treaty, it could be argued that certain principles, especially given how widely they are followed by states, reflect rules of customary international law.
Furthermore, the European Union adopted the Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive (hereafter: CSDDD) last year, which must be implemented by Member States, including Finland, within approximately one year from now on. In addition, the United Nations is currently in the process of negotiating a new international treaty specifically on Business and Human Rights.
Both the CSDDD and the planned international treaty refer to the Guiding Principles as a foundational element of the regulatory framework, highlighting their significant and continuing relevance. The Guiding Principles rest on three pillars: Protect, Respect, and Remedy. The obligation to protect human rights lies primarily with states, although under evolving legal interpretation, market actors also bear a secondary responsibility. The duty to respect human rights lies with companies, while remedy is a shared responsibility between states and companies, which includes the provision of compensation.
The official commentary of the Guiding Principles specifies which human rights documents (primarily international treaties) fall under the scope of the three pillars. One such is the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (hereafter: ICCPR), developed within the UN and signed in 1966, entering into force in 1976. Of particular relevance here is Article 27 of the ICCPR, often overlooked, which deals with minority rights, including language rights. This provision is especially significant in light of Finnair’s decision, as Finland is a party to the ICCPR. Given that Finnair is majority-owned by the Finnish state, it qualifies as a public company in legal terms and this ownership entails heightened responsibility on the part of the Finnish state.
Of the Particular Legal Context
While Swedish-speaking Finns are not necessarily considered a de jure minority by the Finnish state (‘considering that Swedish is one of the two national languages of Finland, the Swedish-speaking Finns are not considered a minority as such but rather a de facto language minority.’), in my view, Article 27 of the ICCPR still applies to them. Moreover, Finland has extended the scope of another relevant international treaty: the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages (1992, Council of Europe), to include the Swedish language spoken in Finland, even though it is an official language in the country. This extension is based on Article 3(1) of the Charter, which allows states to apply the Charter to “official languages which are less widely used.”
It is also worth noting that international and domestic legal frameworks sometimes approach the same societal reality from different perspectives, resulting in distinct legal interpretations. Importantly, both the Guiding Principles and the above-mentioned EU Directive list the ICCPR as part of the human rights minimum standard, which logically includes Article 27. Furthermore, minority rights fall within the broader category of human rights, as affirmed by many international treaties, for example, Article 1 of the Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities. From all this, we may draw the following conclusions.
Finnair’s decision to remove the Swedish language from in-flight communication, something I recently experienced firsthand during travel, is not merely a corporate policy choice, but one that raises human rights concerns, specifically with respect to the enjoyment and exercise of minority language rights. In human rights law and in many constitutional traditions, there exists a principle of acquired rights (or vested rights). This means that once a certain level of human rights protection is achieved, it may not be rolled back arbitrarily. Such a rollback is only permissible if it serves another human right and satisfies the criteria of necessity and proportionality. This implies that had Finnair never provided Swedish-language communication on board, it would not necessarily be required to introduce it now. However, since it had previously done so, it cannot lawfully withdraw this service without a compelling justification, such as the protection of another human right, and even then, necessity and proportionality must be observed.
There is little to suggest that the removal of Swedish from in-flight communication was done in the interest of protecting another human right. The situation is further complicated by Finland’s commitments under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. Upon ratifying the Charter, Finland undertook to “oppose practices designed to discourage the use of regional or minority languages in connection with economic or social activities” and “in the economic and social sectors directly under their control (public sector), to organise activities to promote the use of regional or minority languages.”
Conclusions
Under the existing Business and Human Rights (BHR) framework, state-owned enterprises are subject to stricter expectations regarding the protection of human rights. As stated in Guiding Principle No. 4, ‘[S]tates should take additional steps to protect against human rights abuses by business enterprises that are owned or controlled by the State, (…) including, where appropriate, by requiring human rights due diligence.’
One of the core elements of this framework is Human Rights Due Diligence (HRDD), also a key component of the aforementioned EU Directive. HRDD refers to the continuous human rights audit that companies are expected to embed into their practices. They must monitor the human rights impact of their actions, both internally and externally.
Companies must examine two main dimensions:
(1) how their decisions affect the human (including minority) rights of their employees, and
(2) how those decisions affect society or parts of the society in general.
In this case, Finnair’s decision clearly interferes with the rights of its Swedish-speaking Finn employees. But more broadly, it also negatively affects the linguistic (minority/human) rights of the entire Swedish-speaking population in Finland.
One might ask whether Finnair conducted an HRDD process in relation to this decision? If it did, then the conclusions it drew were clearly flawed. As argued above, the decision undermines the previously achieved level of human rights protection for a specific community and its members.
In conclusion, I believe that Finnair, in this case, has failed to respect the language rights of Swedish-speaking Finns. It is the responsibility of the Finnish state, through regulation or improved enforcement, to help restore the previous level of human rights protection. And what leads me to this conclusion? It might be more difficult to argue along these lines based solely on the relevant provisions of Finnish domestic law, but in my view, international law, and in particular the Business and Human Rights framework, opens up new perspectives in this regard. In my view, the responsibility of the Finnish state arises under Article 27 of the ICCPR, as interpreted in light of the BHR framework, due to the reduction of acquired/vested rights of Swedish-speaking Finns.
Norbert Tóth is Associate Professor at Ludovika University of Public Service and University Lecturer in public international law at Åbo Akademi University.
- Or for example, regarding the advantages of multilingualism and foreign direct investment in a recent case study of Uzbekistan, see: Ashurova, Jasmina et al., The Role of Foreign Languages in Attracting Foreign Investments. American Journal of Business Practice, 2(2025): pp. 18-24. ↩︎