Budget for the Nordic Baltic project: FOI release

FOI reference: FOI/18/01400
Date received: 15 May 2018
Date responded: 29 May 2018

Information requested

1. What the budget is for the Nordic Baltic project?

2. What funding has been provided to "Nordic Horizons" in each of the years since 2012?

3. What lessons you have learned from the Finnish pilot scheme of a "universal basic income"?

Response

I enclose a copy of most of the information you requested.

The answer to your question "What the budget is for the Nordic Baltic project?" is:

The Scottish Government is committed to engaging with the Nordic Baltic countries with whom we have mutual social, economic and environmental interests. Our policy commits us to strengthening relations and exchanging policy best practice. Departments across the Scottish Government are engaged with this work. This aim in itself does not require a specific budget allocation.

Some of the information you have requested is available from the Scottish Government website at /publications/foi-18-00239/.

Under section 25(1) of FOISA, we do not have to give you information which is already reasonably accessible to you. If, however, you do not have internet access to obtain this information from the website listed, then please contact me again and I will send you a paper copy.

The answer to your question "What lessons you have learned from the Finnish pilot scheme of a "universal basic income"?" is:

As recently confirmed by the Finnish Social Security Agency, KELA, the Basic Income Experiment in Finland is set to continue as planned until the end of 2018. Until such times as the trials have ceased, and analysis undertaken, no conclusions can be drawn from this experiment. We will consider the research findings once these are made available, these are expected to be published by the end of 2019 or at the beginning of 2020.

Meanwhile we will continue to learn from the design and implementation of the Finnish scheme and monitor this, and other international pilots, to inform our own thinking.

About FOI

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