Register of Associations

The result area for Association and Foundation Affairs of the National Board of Patents and Registration is responsible for maintaining the Register of Associations. The result area carries out the freedom of association and freedom of religion guaranteed in the Constitution of Finland.

The result area for Association and Foundation Affairs

• maintains the Register of Associations and the Register of Religious Communities
• registers associations and religious communities and handles amendment notifications associated with them
• provides information about the registers
• serves clients by giving them legal advice regarding the Associations Act, association rules and registration procedures.

Freedom of association is one of the basic political rights guaranteed in the Constitution of Finland.

The Register of Associations comprises approximately 137,000 associations.

Notices to the Register of Associations

The basic notice or the notice for registration of an association must be filed in writing on basic notice forms.

The notice must be accompanied by the rules and charter of foundation of the association. The notice must state the full name, address, home municipality and personal identity code of the chairperson and any person authorized to sign for the association, and restrictions, if any, in respect of the right to sign for the association. The registering authority must check that the name proposed for the association clearly differs from the names of associations already entered in the register and that it is not misleading. Nor may there be an obstacle arising from Chapter 1 of the Associations Act, i.e. the associations must belong to the sphere of application of the Act. The association may not be a prohibited association referred to in the Act, nor may its purpose and area of activities be primarily financial.

The rules of an association must state at least the following details:

• the name of the association
• the Finnish municipality where the association is based
  
• the obligation of a member to pay membership fees and other fees to the association
• the number, or minimum and maximum number, of members of the Board of Directors and auditors and their term of office
• the accounting period of the association
• the time of electing the Board of Directors and auditors, adopting the financial statements and deciding on the formal approval of actions
• how and within which period the meeting of the association has to be convened
• how the association´s assets are to be used if the association is dissolved or abolished.

An amendment notice has to be filed when the association amends its rules or the persons authorized to sign for the association are changed. An amendment notice must be accompanied by the amended rules. Amendments will come into force once they have been registered in the Register of Associations.

A notice of dissolution must be filed when an association has decided to dissolve itself. The notice must state the names of the persons that have acted as liquidators and the fact that liquidation assignment has been completed.

Preliminary checks

The Register of Associations carries out preliminary checks concerning rules and amendments to rules of associations. A request for carrying out of a preliminary check is free in form and must be accompanied by two copies of the rules.

Basic, amendment and dissolutions notices can be submitted directly to the Register of Associations or filed with the local authority of the domicile of the association. The local authority will deliver the notice to the Register of Associations.

Would you like to make your association more accessible on the web?

Processing time prognosis for the Register of Associations

June 2013

Processing time means the time from filing a notification or an application to the first communication with the client. The first communication can be a decision about registration, an official action in writing, or a telephone call.

The estimated processing time does not promise to process the matter within the time indicated but rather is an estimate that may change according to the processing status.

The processing of rule amendments of associations is currently slow.The processing time will shorten later this year.

Please note

If the registration of changing the persons entitled to sign for the association requires the registration of pending rule amendments, the processing time for this is the same as for the rule amendments.