HS Turku | Prime Minister Orpo had to leave himself for an hour to handle the train – This is how Orpo spoke about the project at the Turku council

Prime minister Petteri Orpo (kok) had to exclude itself from decision-making regarding the Turku hourly train project due to the Chancellor of the Exchequer's policy, told MTV News on Saturday.

The Chancellor of Justice interprets Prime Minister Orpo as staying in the case because he has handled the affairs of the company related to the project as a Turku city councilor. According to MTV, the chancellor of justice considered that “handling the affairs of the same company both as a city councilor and as a minister leads or can at least lead to a conflict of interest in the eyes of an outsider”.

Prime Minister Orpo's staff confirms to the HS that, following the guidelines given by the Chancellor of Justice, Orpo would stay out of the project's decision-making and that a dialogue with the Chancellor of Justice will take place as part of the basic work. Orpo would remain himself during the fall of 2023 in two meetings of the economic policy ministerial committee when discussing the Turku hourly train.

HS did not get an answer to how the freezing problem came to light. The staff does not think that Orpo's stay will affect the progress of the train project, but the project will proceed based on the government program.

According to MTV, also the finance minister Riikka Purra (ps) has dealt with the rail project when he was in the Kirkkonummi municipal council. Purra commented on the matter on Saturday in the message service X.

“The mere participation of the municipal council does not cause delays in railway projects in the Government Council. Last Thursday, the matter was brought up with the chancellor of justice,” Purra wrote.

Turku At the city council meeting on March 16, 2020, Orpo gave a speech regarding Turku's hourly train.

At that meeting, Turku decided to become a partner in the one-hour train project company. Orpo's speech came up in MTV's Saturday news, according to which the speech was searched in the archives in Orpo's headquarters in the fall, when Orpo's suspension was being investigated.

In the speech, Orpo called the one-hour train project the top project in Turku and the whole of Finland. A video of the speech has been published, among other things, in connection with this story.

Orphan in his speech compared the train project to the completion of the first road leading from Helsinki to Turku, which has had a significant impact on the entire west coast.

“Now we are in a situation where Turku's high-speed rail connection is number one among the country's big strategic rail projects,” Orpo said in his speech.

According to Orpo, a total of 40 million euros was allocated to the project in the previous period. At the time of the speech, the provincial plan needed by the project, the cooperation patterns with Helsinki, Espoo, Lohja and Salo, and the shareholder agreement for the project company concluded under the leadership of the Turku city management were already ready.

“Now it's worth doing everything we can to make the project go forward,” Orpo said in his speech.

According to Orpo, however, the project still needed a significant investment from the state and increased cooperation with the towns along the railway. According to Orpo, determined lobbying work should be done in order to get the billion-dollar project started.

According to Orpo, at that time in 2020, during the corona era, agriculture was heading for worse times, so “now if ever there was a demand for such large public investments.”

According to Orpo, the positive effects of the project would last for decades, and the investments would also have a positive effect on employment.

At the end of his speech, Orpo appealed to his “good friends”:

“Now that this, my dear friends, is at its furthest point, now everyone has to use their own channels to influence that the government makes sensible decisions and moves forward with this project purposefully towards the construction phase.”