Provinces of Finland

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Finland consists of 6 provinces (Finnish: läänit, Swedish: län). The provincial authority is part of the central government's executive branch. It is not democratically controlled except through the national parliament and the President of Finland. The system was created in 1634, and its makeup was changed drastically in 1997, when the number of the provinces was reduced from 12 to 6. This effectively made them purely administrative units, as the linguistic or cultural variations do not follow the borders of the provinces. The State of Finland is since the late 19th century bilingual. Its governmental offices and agencies use both domestic languages in contacts with the public.

Each province is led by a governor (maaherra, landshövding) who is appointed by the president after a proposal by the cabinet. The governor is the head of the State Provincial Office (lääninhallitus, länsstyrelse) which act as the joint regional authority for seven ministries in the following domains:

social services and health care
education and culture
police administration
rescue services
traffic administration
competition and consumer affairs
judicial administration

The official administrative subentities under the Provincial Office authorities are the Registry Offices (Finnish maistraatti, Swedish magistrat), and State Local Districts (Finnish kihlakunta, Swedish härad), which are districts for police, assessment and attorney services. These do not necessarily correspond to municipal level (municipality, sub-region, region) divisions of the country.

The Governor's post is widely known as a post for "disposal" of retiring politicians.

Image:Suomen laanit.png

No.	Provinces	Finnish and Swedish names	Residence city	Population (2003)	Area (km²)	Merged Provinces (1997)
1.	Southern Finland	Etelä-Suomen lääni Södra Finlands län	Hämeenlinna Tavastehus	2,116,914	34,378	Uusimaa, Kymi, Tavastia
2.	Western Finland	Länsi-Suomen lääni Västra Finlands län	Turku Åbo	1,848,269	74,185	Vaasa, Turku-Pori, Central Finland, Tavastia (Pirkanmaa)
3.	Eastern Finland	Itä-Suomen lääni, Östra Finlands län	Mikkeli S:t Michel	582,781	48,726	Kuopio, North Karelia, Mikkeli
4.	Oulu	Oulun lääni Uleåborgs län	Oulu Uleåborg	458,504	57,000	No changes
5.	Lapland	Lapin lääni Lapplands län	Rovaniemi Rovaniemi	186,917	98,946	No changes
6.	Åland¹	Ahvenanmaan lääni Ålands län²	Maarianhamina Mariehamn²	26,000	6,784	No changes

1/ Some duties, which in Mainland Finland are handled by the provinces, are on the Åland Islands transferred to the autonomous Government of Åland.
2/ The Åland Islands are unilingually Swedish.

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