FINLAND | MIKKO LAAKSO 153 3.2. Land Travelling by land can be divided into two upper categories, road and railway traffic. Furthermore, transport services by road include buses, rental cars and taxis, each of which shall be briefly covered in this paper. Finland is covered with a railway network extending all the way from Helsinki and Hanko in the south to Kolari and Kemijärvi in northern Lapland. Railway traffic is managed by another state-owned company, VR Group, which held a contractual monopoly over the trafficking of goods (until 2007) and in passenger transport until 1 January 2021. The aim of the breaking of the monopoly was to encourage and allow competition but instead an “open access” model was adopted. The traffic itself is not competitive, but the company entering the market buys all the equipment itself. It is considered unlikely that any company would do so due to the costs and capital needed to enter the market in the first place. As the railway transport business has been open to other actors besides VR Group for just under a year, it is too early to determine if there will be competitors entering the market or not. In terms of passenger traffic, VR Group handles both long-distance and commuter train traffic in the Helsinki region and the Tampere region, including international connections to St. Petersburg and Moscow. There is no actual commuter traffic or local trains outside the Helsinki and Tampere regions. Smaller towns between larger train hubs are serviced by commuter trains stopping more frequently than faster InterCity- and Pendolino-trains. Finnish Transport Infrastructure Agency under the Ministry of Transport and Communications is responsible for the safety and functionality of railways. All regulations regarding the railway traffic are to be found in chapters 6 to 9 of the Act on Transport Services. Professional road transport of passengers requires a permit as set forth in the EU regulation7, which was implemented in Finland via chapter 2 of the Act on Transport Services. Road transport by buses was opened to competition by legislation in December 2009. However, a cartel made up by a group of established transport companies formed a cartel to limit entry of new actors into the road transport market. The cartel operated from 2010 to 2015 before being investigated and the operators were finally fined by the Market Court in 2017. 7 Regulation (EC) No 1071/2009 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 21 October 2009 establishing common rules concerning the conditions to be complied with to pursue the occupation of road transport operator and repealing Council Directive 96/26/EC.
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