It is the Ministry of Finance that has submitted the proposal for a saving of 36 million euros, approximately 400 million kronor, according to the newspaper Nya Åland.
According to Johanna Boijer-Svahnström, information director at Viking Line, the saving would affect all 2,000 employees in the form of new terms and employment contracts, as well as lost tax revenue for Åland.
It is a cold shower. We have just recently flagged home two vessels, Cinderella and XPRS, which means that all five wholly-owned vessels are under the Finnish flag. It would mean the most suffering for us as a company, and it would likely mean drastic measures. One measure would, hypothetically, be to flag the vessels to Sweden, she says.
– In Finland, we call it a support, but it's about us getting back paid taxes and social fees that we have paid in. If we flag to Sweden, we no longer pay in that money, so the state does not save anything from this.
