Church burial fees expected to increase in Vantaa as state funding cuts loom

Cuts in state funding for the Church and plans from the Church Council are expected to lead to increased burial fees in larger cities, predicts Jukka Parvinen, director of the Vantaa Parish Union. Preliminary calculations indicate that burial fees in Vantaa may rise by approximately €300, bringing the cost of a traditional burial to around €1,600, which includes the acquisition of a grave and the burial fee.

Two significant changes underlie this development. According to the Ministry of Finance’s budget proposal for next year, funding for the Evangelical-Lutheran Church will be reduced by approximately €20 million. This state funding supports the costs associated with burial services, population registration, and the maintenance of culturally and historically significant buildings. The Church Assembly will determine how this funding is allocated among parishes and parish unions.

The Church Council’s plenary session plans to present a method of distributing state funding to parishes next year, incorporating a dual weighting system of 50% based on population and 50% based on new distribution criteria currently under consideration.

Until now, funding has been allocated to municipalities based solely on population numbers. However, Parvinen warns that the reform would disproportionately cut funding from cities like Helsinki, Espoo, Vantaa, Oulu, Tampere, Jyväskylä, and Turku. Factors such as the number of deceased and interred individuals in a municipality, as well as a cultural heritage index that accounts for the number of protected buildings regardless of their size, will now play a role in allocation.

Furthermore, the burial services law mandates that the Church provide these services to residents, regardless of church affiliation, implying that church tax funds should not be used for burying the deceased. Parvinen argues that the proposed new distribution criteria may create inequality and calls for a more thorough approach, ensuring fairness from both a resident’s and parish’s financial perspective.