Media in the UK, USA, Russia, Europe, Australia and India wrote that 34-year-old Prime Minister Sanna Marin was announcing the introduction of a four-day working week and a six-hour working day in the country. Let's find out if this is true.

In the first week of January, the whole world was once again inflamed with envy of the people of Finland. Either they have a sauna with a warm and lamp-based Scandinavian “hygge”, or they have the best school education in the world without grades. And now a new blow: 34-year-old Prime Minister Sanna Marin announces the introduction of a four-day working week and a six-hour working day in the country. Media in the UK, USA, Russia, Europe, Australia and India wrote about this - from the most respected and large to niche and regional.

Everything would be fine, but some other media, such as, for example, the Washington Post and News Now Finland, decided to check the information and understand how real this innovation is and where its legs grow from. And we found out that the government is not planning anything like this in the near future. Moreover, no one is even seriously working on this idea.

How did this happen? Here's how.

In August 2019, then-Minister of Transport Marin took part in celebrations dedicated to the anniversary of the founding of the ruling Social Democratic Party of Finland, of which she is a member. The festive program included a panel discussion. It was there, in a warm, benign atmosphere, that she said that perhaps the country would benefit (attention!) “or four-day work week, or six-hour workday." She never spoke about the introduction of both.

Then she wrote about this on her Twitter, separately stipulating that this was not part of the government program, but her personal good wish.

Well, I wrote and wrote. Fine. Only four months later, for some reason, the Austrian news publication Kontrast remembered this statement, correctly describing the circumstances of the appearance of the statement, but replacing the conjunction “or” with “and.”

And finally, on January 2, the Brussels newspaper New Europe published an article with a completely misleading headline that the Prime Minister was calling for the introduction of both in the country. And this article has already created waves and misled the whole world. The media decided that this was a fresh initiative and almost the decision of the current prime minister. The Finnish authorities had to rebut her many times. But, as usually happens in such cases, it spread much worse than beautiful, but unreliable pseudo-news.

In fact, the story turned out to be too good to be true.