SWI swissinfo.ch, drawing on Pew data: Switzerland's Muslim population was 6.1% (500,000) in 2016. With zero migration the share would rise to 8.2% (660,000) by 2050, to 10.3% (1,140,000) in the medium scenario, and to 12.9% (1,500,000) in the high scenario. Muslims are on average 13 years younger than other Europeans. Pew assumed a fertility rate of 2.1 for Muslims versus 1.5 for others.

A peer-reviewed article uses wavelet analysis to project a Muslim majority in 13 European countries between 2085 (Cyprus) and 2215 (Lithuania). Majority status would be reached in different countries in: Sweden 2125, France 2135, UK 2180. It assumes higher fertility (~1 more child per woman) and 2017-level migration (~706,000 asylum seekers/yr, 86% Muslim). The authors offer no uncertainty caveat about the time horizon — they call the mid-point scenario the “most likely” one and go on to describe concrete social consequences out to 2220. The method is signal processing rather than a demographic cohort model, and the rule used to grow the Muslim population is problematic: each five-year figure adds a share of the 0–4 age group to a share of the total population, although those children are already inside the total. The raised share is then fed into the next period, so the deviation compounds about 40 times by 2220. The model has no mortality, no age structure for the Muslim population and no fertility convergence. Compare this with the Pew and IIASA cohort-component projections.

The scholar of religion Teemu Pauha estimates that Finland had about 140,000 Muslims at the start of last year, growing by roughly 10,000 a year. The article covers the Muslim community in Vaasa, which has grown partly through international students — the University of Vaasa's international student numbers have more than doubled in a year — and prays in three rented spaces. The community would be interested in buying the Vetokannas church and converting it into a mosque. According to Edla Mäkelä, chief architect of the Church Administration, no church in Finland has previously been converted into a mosque. That church is not for sale.

Jerusalem Post: Registered Muslim membership in Norway grew from 72,000 (2006) to an estimated 197,000+ (2025), about +174%. Church of Norway membership, meanwhile, fell from 85% (1994) to 62% (2024).

The European Conservative reports Dutch demographer Jan Latten's estimate: Muslims would grow from about one million today (~6%) to 3–4 million by 2050 (~20% of a 20-million population). The estimate assumes migration continues at the current rate.

A report by the demographic observatory of San Pablo CEU University estimates Spain's Muslim population at 2.4–2.5 million at the start of 2025, about 5% of the population: roughly 3.6% first-generation immigrants and about 1.4% people born in Spain with at least one Muslim-background parent. About 11% of babies born in Spain in 2024 had at least one Muslim-background parent. The report attributes the gap to Muslim women's fertility being two to three times that of Spanish women. About 85% of first-generation Muslim immigrants come from Africa, and around 65% of the whole group is of Moroccan origin. Here too, this publication defines Muslim identity by country of origin and parental background rather than religious conviction.

A calculation by Germany's Federal Office for Migration and Refugees (BAMF) puts the number of Muslims living in Germany at 6.6–7.0 million in 2025, or 8.0–8.5% of the population. The share is up 1.6–1.8 percentage points on the 2019 estimate, mainly because of migration from crisis regions in the Middle East. The largest background group is Turkish (39.4%), followed by Arab (29.4%). The Turkish share has been falling since 2008. The figure is an extrapolation combining first results from the 2025 microcensus with the 2020 Muslim Life in Germany survey. Muslims are counted as people with a background in Muslim-majority countries — both immigrants and their German-born descendants — rather than by religious self-identification, which is why the result is given as a range.

The main recruitment problems are that applicants lack teacher training, teaching experience or sufficient Finnish. A third of providers can and a third cannot give adequate support with current resources. Classes are often held in the evening, and only about half of the mother-tongue teachers worked with a preparatory-education teacher or a special-needs teacher. Teachers say quality would improve if classes were grouped by age and the syllabus were returned to the national core curriculum. The evaluation has effectiveness in its title, but the report defines it as the teaching's capacity and opportunities to support the intended changes, and the material is a survey. Learning outcomes were not measured, so whether the teaching affects language skills or school performance is not known in Finland.

The 2024 general grant was EUR 22 475 000 for foreign-language pupils and EUR 75 000 for Sami and Romani pupils. The same sum covers three things: Finnish or Swedish as a second language, other support for teaching, and own-mother-tongue instruction. The coefficients are public even though the split is not: the computed cost of a teaching hour is EUR 25, the grant covers at most 86 % of accepted computed costs, and own-mother-tongue instruction is funded for at most two weekly hours per notional group of four pupils. Two pupils form a group where four cannot be found.

In autumn 2025 the teaching reached 24 827 pupils and students, in 63 languages, from 85 providers. In autumn 2018 the figures were 20 732, 58 and 88, so participation has grown by about a fifth while the number of providers has stood still. The largest languages in autumn 2025 were Russian 5 931, Arabic 3 019, Somali 2 108, Ukrainian 1 746, English 1 361 and Albanian 1 206. Ukrainian grew from 105 pupils to 1 746 in three years.

From the 2014 survey on the work and well-being of people of foreign origin: three in four rated their Finnish or Swedish at least intermediate. The figure cannot be set beside MoniSuomi's 63% as a time series. The populations differ — UTH covered people of foreign origin aged 15–64, MoniSuomi foreign-born people aged 20–74 — and the question is not the same. The gap mainly shows that two self-assessment surveys do not make a trend.

A THL population survey of 7,838 foreign-born respondents, collected between September 2022 and March 2023. The question was put to everyone regardless of whether they had attended any course, which makes it the only figure covering the whole population. Of all immigrants 63% reported speaking Finnish or Swedish at least at intermediate level: 68% of women and 57% of men aged 20–74. The spread between background countries is steep: 89% of women from Estonia, 80% of women from Russia or the Soviet Union against 60% of the men, while the figure is 44% for people from South-East Asia and 40% for those from the rest of Asia, the Americas and Oceania. The regional pattern runs against expectation: 70–71% in Kymenlaakso, Päijät-Häme and Central Uusimaa, 60% in Helsinki and 59% in Western Uusimaa.

Breaks the MoniSuomi distribution down further than the combined share: about a quarter rate themselves excellent, about a third beginners, and about one in ten report speaking neither national language at all. Proficiency was weakest among those who came for work or study, who may not need the language day to day and some of whom are in the country temporarily. The page notes that survey data is needed because register data cannot measure language skills.

The linguistic target of integration training is B1.1, a functional basic proficiency. According to the review, a ministry survey of the ELY centres in summer 2024 found that in the training the centres purchased in 2022 and 2023, 32% of everyone who completed it reached at least B1.1 and about 60% stopped at A2 or below. Authors Risto Karinen, Taru Aihinen, Jenna Siltala and Olli Oosi. The cover is dated May 2024 although it cites a survey run that summer. The document was published in the government project portal in May 2025.

The conditions for a plan and the training that follows from it: the person is a registered unemployed jobseeker, no more than three years have passed since the first residence permit or the registration of residence, and they are able to take part full-time in services promoting integration and employment.

The established form of integration training — labour market training lasting about a year — has 13,000–14,000 students annually, and the full-time training at folk high schools about 7,000. There were 610,148 foreign-language speakers in Finland at the end of 2024. Statistics Finland counted 57,000 students in liberal adult education aimed at immigrants in 2024, but those courses are lighter than the targeted integration training, and attendance says nothing about the level reached.

The profession's own background report on the lack of regulation: the law sets no competence requirement for an interpreter, so a single assignment may be handled by anyone. Only the title of court interpreter is protected, and the register the National Agency for Education has kept since 2016 exists, but no authority is obliged to use an interpreter from it. The report comes from an interest organisation and its proposed remedy is an interpreting act, but its description of the current absence of regulation can be checked against the law.

The wellbeing services counties spent EUR 35.3 million on interpretation and translation in 2024, about four million more than in 2023. The largest state buyers are the court service at 4.5 million, the Immigration Service at 3.8 million (2.9 million in 2023) and the Prime Minister's Office at 2.6 million. Municipal spending was unchanged. Part of the growth is remote interpretation, which has increased use. No one holds a total, because the purchases are not recorded in a uniform way. In Finland the right to service in one's own language does not depend on time in the country. In Denmark someone who has lived there more than three years pays for health-care interpretation themselves.

Natalia Tolmacheva, a PhD in economics, studied Finnish for seven years without reaching the required level, switched to Swedish and passed the test at the first attempt after ten months of study. She speaks mainly English in Finland. In 2022, 530 people took the intermediate National Certificate in Swedish against 6,869 in Finnish, and demand for the Swedish test has grown by about a hundred takers a year. Lidiia Salo, who prepares candidates for the test, says Swedish is perceived as considerably easier than Finnish. Saara Kalajoki of the National Agency for Education offers another explanation: the choice usually follows from moving to a Swedish-speaking region or a Swedish-speaking spouse. One interviewee, Kia Lindberg of the Helsinki Adult Education Centre, raises the integration concern.

Citizenship requires satisfactory spoken and written Finnish or Swedish, normally demonstrated through the National Certificate of Language Proficiency. The bill adds a citizenship test on knowledge of society from the beginning of 2027. The test would not be required of an applicant who has demonstrated proficiency matching the Integration Act's target level, B1.1, in at least two skill areas.

There were 285,360 Swedish speakers at the end of 2024, about five per cent of the population, and the number is projected to fall to 281,789 by 2030 and 260,973 by 2050. The distribution is uneven: about a third live in Ostrobothnia, where Swedish speakers are a narrow majority, and although the capital region has the largest numbers — 36,945 in Helsinki, 20,246 in Espoo — the share of each city's population is small. The compiler is an advocacy body for Swedish speakers, but the figures are Statistics Finland's.

“In Finland nurses' professional language skills are not tested at all. No such test even exists.” The law requires a health or social care professional to have sufficient language skills without defining what sufficient means, and only general proficiency is tested. Both nursing unions, SuPer and Tehy, regard this as a clear patient-safety risk. In SuPer's survey one per cent of respondents judged the professional language skills of those recruited from abroad to be sufficient. The unions blame employers' unwillingness to pay for language teaching.

A member survey run 2–22 September 2024 among members in employment, 3,255 responses. On the question about dangerous situations (n = 2,157), 14% answered yes, often and 39% yes, sometimes — 53% had seen dangerous situations caused by a foreign-language colleague's lack of Finnish. 23% had not and 24% could not say. Of the respondents 83% agreed partly or fully that a colleague's weak language skills are a burden on them. The open answers return to medication, record-keeping, understanding care instructions, and tasks shifting to the Finnish-speaking staff. The survey is the union's own, the respondents are self-selected and the question measures a perception rather than a recorded incident. SuPer is campaigning in the same document for a compulsory B2-level test as a condition of graduation.