As we head into European elections in June, we hear what's on voters' minds and find out how MEPs are held accountable for everything from their expenses to legislation on bottle caps.
This week the All Points North podcast heard from listener Joel Willans, who told us he had used Yle's Election Compass to find out who he might vote for.
He found the compass offered some options he had not previously thought of as politically like-minded.
"With the security thing, there was a wide sort of plethora of different parties who represented my views," said Willans. "So, yeah, and not — including candidates from the parties that I would typically expect to represent my views — but also different parties."
Listen to the episode via this embedded player, on Yle Areena, via Apple, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. Join the conversation!
We also heard from Julie Breton, who works for a Helsinki NGO, who told us she thinks it's important to vote to influence economic policy and AI regulation.
"The EU has so much power in you know, influencing those matters at the level of the different states of the EU," said Breton. "So it's really important to hear about those things."
If people don't make their voices heard, they fail to influence how significant decision-making power and resources are distributed.
APN also spoke to Yle reporter Elli Piirainen, who has been looking into an allowance paid to MEPs to cover office expenses, taxis and other incidentals. Oversight of that spending is pretty lax, leading to different practices among MEPs.
"Some people are paying super close attention to that," said Piirainen. "They are holding on to every receipt because they want to be transparent about how they use that money. But many, many, many MEPs are not telling at all how they are using that money."
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This week's show was presented by Egan Richardson and Zena Iovino. The sound engineer was Matias Puumala.
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