The Finnish government has submitted a bill to parliament that would introduce a mandatory citizenship test for applicants for a Finnish passport. The test is intended to assess knowledge of Finnish society, its structure, and key principles, and if approved by parliament, the new rules are scheduled to take effect in early 2027.
As clarified by the Finnish Ministry of the Interior, the exam will be part of a broader reform of the citizenship law, aimed at tightening naturalization requirements and placing greater emphasis on integration, employment, and adherence to the norms of Finnish society. The test will be available in Finnish or Swedish.
The reform continues the current government’s phased approach to tightening migration policy. Finland had previously increased requirements regarding length of residence, income, and compliance with the law for citizenship applicants, and has now decided to add a separate test of civic knowledge.
This discussion is of particular importance for Finland’s labor market and migration environment, as the country remains significantly more dependent on external population inflows than it was just a few years ago. According to Statistics Finland, the country’s population stood at 5,652,881 by the end of 2025, and population growth in recent years has been largely driven by migration. In 2025, 50,060 people arrived in Finland, and net migration stood at 34,852 people, fully offsetting the natural population decline.
Authorities are also noting an increase in the number of new citizens. According to the Finnish Immigration Service, 14,689 people received Finnish citizenship in 2025—a record high. Of these, 13,483 received citizenship upon application, and 1,206 through the notification procedure.
According to official data from Statistics Finland, 5.65 million people resided in Finland at the end of 2025, and the number of residents of foreign origin and foreign citizens continued to grow; specific databases from Statistics Finland provide a breakdown by citizenship and country of origin, and also show that the growth in recent years was largely due to the influx from Ukraine. Official releases from Statistics Finland explicitly noted that in 2023, the largest numbers of people arrived in Finland from Ukraine, Russia, Sri Lanka, and India.
According to the Relocation project, the Paraguayan government has launched the new Paraguay Investor Pass program, which allows foreign investors to obtain permanent residency directly, without a prior temporary residency phase. According to the country’s official authorities, the program offers several investment options. To obtain permanent residency, foreigners can invest $150,000 in tourism projects or $200,000 in real estate or the Paraguayan stock market.
The program will be administered through the SUACE single-window system under the Ministry of Industry and Trade. Most of the procedure has been digitized, while in-person visits will be required primarily for obtaining an identity card.
The Paraguayan government expects that the new scheme will increase the country’s appeal to foreign capital and simplify the relocation of investors interested in launching or developing projects locally.
The government cites tax benefits for residents as an additional incentive. Specifically, the dividend tax rate for residents has been reduced from 15% to 8%.
According to official data, Paraguay issued 40,600 residence permits last year, with the majority going to Brazilian citizens. The government expects a further increase in the number of residency permits in 2026.
The new program may contribute to capital inflows primarily into tourism, real estate, and the financial sector, as well as increase foreign investors’ interest in Paraguay as one of the relatively affordable jurisdictions for obtaining permanent residency through investment.
According to Fixygen, Strategy Inc., one of the largest corporate holders of Bitcoin, purchased $2.54 billion worth of the cryptocurrency last week, according to documents filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). This marks the company’s largest weekly Bitcoin purchase volume since November 2024.
According to the disclosed information, the purchase was financed using funds raised by Strategy through a $2.18 billion placement of preferred shares, as well as common shares.
Amid this news, the price of Bitcoin rose 0.6% on Monday, reaching $75,136. Over the past month, the cryptocurrency has risen 6% in value.
At the same time, Strategy’s own shares fell 3% in pre-market trading in the U.S.
Strategy Inc. is an American software development company, formerly known as MicroStrategy. In recent years, it has become one of the most prominent public corporate investors in Bitcoin, making the purchase of cryptocurrency a key element of its financial strategy. The company regularly raises capital through stock and debt offerings to further expand its cryptocurrency reserves.
According to Fixygen, PJSC “Odesavinprom” intends to hold a shareholders’ meeting on April 30, 2026. The company discloses corporate information on its own issuer website, where materials for shareholders and notices of material corporate actions are also posted. According to previously published corporate materials, in 2025, Odessavinprom’s shareholders had already made decisions regarding share issuances, and the supervisory board had amended the terms of the issuance. This indicates the company’s ongoing active corporate activity in recent years.
“Odesavinprom” is a producer of grape wines registered in the village of Rozyvka, Bilhorod-Dnistrovskyi District, Odesa Region. According to the issuer’s website, the company’s EDRPOU code is 00412027, and its contact address is 1a Pryvokzalna St., Rozyvka village.
According to the company’s materials regarding the share issuance, the director of the private joint-stock company is Anton Obrezha, and the largest shareholders with stakes exceeding 5% are listed as Vasyl Bratinov with 61.666056% of the shares and Ignat Bratinov with 24.864674%. The company’s authorized capital as of the date of the decision to issue shares was UAH 16.403 million.
According to Opendatabot, PJSC “Odesavinprom” reported revenue of UAH 490.641 million in 2025, with 55 employees, and the company’s founding date is listed as November 18, 2002.
JSC “Tekhmash Manufacturing Enterprise” (Dnipro) ended 2025 with a net profit of UAH 5.22 million, which is 1.9 times higher than the corresponding figure for 2024.
According to the company’s financial report published in the disclosure system of the National Securities and Stock Market Commission (NSSMC), its net revenue for the year decreased by 3.5% to UAH 215 million. Total exports amounted to UAH 24.1 million, notably to Poland and France.
Profit from the company’s operating activities increased by 49.5% to UAH 6.2 million, while gross profit rose by 18.2% to UAH 31 million.
Additionally, it was reported that the general meeting of shareholders on April 16 of this year decided to allocate a portion of retained earnings totaling UAH 5 million toward the payment of dividends for 2025 at a rate of UAH 16,667 per share (with a par value of UAH 8). Dividends will be paid by October 16, 2025.
As previously reported, in 2024 (as in 2023), “Tekhmash” also allocated UAH 5 million from retained earnings for dividends.
According to the report, retained earnings amounted to nearly UAH 67 million as of the beginning of 2026.
The company lists its largest customers as the Nizhnedniprovsky Pipe Rolling Plant—20% of supply volume, “Fastiv Organic Biotechnologies”—13%, “Biopharma Plasma”—10%, with the remaining 57% accounted for by customers with shares of less than 6%.
“Since the main consumers of the company’s works and services are enterprises in the metallurgical industry, its operations depend to a significant extent on the state of the metallurgical sector. “Challenges specific to this line of business include intense competition, rising material costs, and high prices for spare parts and energy resources,” the report states.
The main specialization of Techmash is the installation of process equipment and pipelines, as well as the manufacture of conveyors (scraper, belt, and screw), storage equipment, metal structures, and exhaust air ducts.
As of the fourth quarter of 2024, according to the NSSMC, 61% of the authorized capital of JSC “Techmash” belongs to its director, Oleksandr Kolomoets, while four other individuals collectively own 28% of the shares. The company’s authorized capital is UAH 2.4 million.
As of early 2026, the company employed 193 people.
The Experts Club analytical center has analyzed the latest trends in the metallurgical sector and the data of the industry’s largest association, the World Steel Association. In 2026, according to the World Steel Association, the global steel market will move from a phase of prolonged adjustment to weak growth: global demand will increase by 0.3%, to 1.724 billion tons, and in 2027 it will accelerate to 1.762 billion tons, or by 2.2%. The association itself believes that the market is passing through the bottom of the 2025–2026 cycle after the structural pressures that had restrained demand since 2022. This means that the global steel industry is gradually emerging from its downturn, but it is doing so very unevenly across regions.
The key conclusion for Ukraine is that the external environment for metallurgy is, on the whole, no longer deteriorating. Worldsteel expects that in 2027 all major developed economies, including the EU, the US, Canada, Japan, and Korea, will already show positive steel demand dynamics. For the EU and the UK, steel consumption is forecast to grow by 1.3% in 2026 and by 3% in 2027, while for the US the figures are 1.7% and 2% respectively. This is important for Ukraine because the European market remains its main external reference point, both in terms of steel product sales and future industrial cooperation.
At the same time, the recovery in global demand will be asymmetric. China, which still determines the global market environment, will continue to reduce steel demand in 2026, though only by 1.5%, and in 2027, according to the association, will move to almost flat dynamics. The main driver of growth among major markets remains India, where demand is expected to increase by 7.4% in 2026 and by 9.2% in 2027. In the developing world excluding China, growth, on the contrary, will slow to 2.5% in 2026 because of the conflict in the Middle East, but will then recover.
For Ukraine, this means that the global market does not promise a sharp price or volume breakthrough, but neither does it create a scenario of a new collapse. In other words, over the next two years the decisive factor for Ukrainian metallurgy will no longer be so much global demand as Ukraine’s own ability to maintain and expand steelmaking, ensure energy supply, logistics, and access to export routes. In this sense, the external market environment is becoming moderately favorable rather than deteriorating, but it is not a saving grace.
Against this background, Ukraine’s own indicator looks restrained. At the end of 2025, the country produced 7.409 million tons of steel, which was 2.2% lower than the 2024 level, and ranked 21st in the world. This figure is significantly lower not only than pre-war levels, but also below the scale that once allowed Ukraine to influence the regional market as one of the major European players.
If the global market is indeed entering a phase of moderate recovery, then the window of opportunity for Ukraine will be determined not so much by whether global demand grows by 0.3% or 2.2%, but by whether the country can restore production volumes at least to a stable double-digit level in millions of tons. Worldsteel’s positive outlook for the EU, growing infrastructure and defense spending in Europe, as well as stabilizing demand in the developed world create the basis for higher consumption of Ukrainian steel in the future. But this opportunity will be realized only if Ukraine restores its own industrial capacity, not automatically.
In a broader sense, the Worldsteel forecast shows that steel is once again becoming an indicator of industrial policy. Where infrastructure investment, railways, defense budgets, and machine-building are growing, demand for metal returns. Ukraine’s post-war recovery strategy should consider metallurgy not as a separate export sector, but as a foundation for construction, machine-building, transport infrastructure, and defense production. Only in this case can even moderate global growth translate into a more tangible internal industrial effect for the country.
The World Steel Association (Worldsteel) brings together steel producers, industry associations, and research institutes from all key steel-producing countries. The association’s members account for around 85% of global steel output.
