The Globalisation Adjustment Fund will pay €1.1 million to help 351 laid-off paper industry workers in Finland, after Parliament approved the Commission’s proposal by 609 votes to 51, with 14 abstentions. MEPs voted on Wednesday of the October plenary week, and the text was published on the plenary site the same day.

The workers lost their jobs in the Finnish regions of Etelä-Suomi and Helsinki-Uusimaa. The package has an estimated total cost of €1.8 million, of which the EU covers 60 percent. Local public employment services pay the remaining share. Aura Salla, an EPP member from Finland, acted as rapporteur on the file, which runs under budgetary procedure 2026/0254(BUD).

The measures are practical and varied. They include job-search training, career coaching, vocational training, self-employment grants, pay subsidies, mobility allowances and business start-up support. The package also funds a pilot that uses artificial intelligence in recruitment, which makes it one of the more experimental uses of the Globalisation Adjustment Fund in a Nordic labour market.

The background is a sector under long pressure. Demand fell because of digitalisation, and Finland’s industry was hit harder by the closure of the border with Russia and the halt in wood imports after Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine. Those events show how geopolitical shocks can spread into regional labour markets far from any front line.

The fund has a track record that puts the Finnish case in perspective. Since 2007 the Globalisation Adjustment Fund has helped more than 185,000 people in 20 EU countries, with €737 million. As of May 2026 it can also finance training for workers who face redundancy, and not only those who have already lost their jobs.

That change matters for how the Globalisation Adjustment Fund works in future, since it shifts the instrument from repairing damage towards preparing for it. Support can now arrive earlier, when a closure is announced, rather than after dismissals have taken place. Whether national authorities use that option widely will be a test of the fund’s reform.

For the 351 workers, the vote turns a Commission proposal into a funded programme, although delivery now depends on Finnish employment services. The wide margin, 609 to 51, shows little political resistance to this kind of targeted help, and it gives the Finnish regions a clear mandate to start delivering the measures. Watch for how quickly the money reaches workers in 2026. The case also underlines a recurring question about the Globalisation Adjustment Fund: whether modest packages of €1.1 million can offset structural decline in a whole industry.