The History of Tukes

Tukes has promoted safety and reliability in Finnish society since 1995, although it had a different name at the beginning.

The Safety Technology Authority, Tukes, was created in 1995 as a result of the merger of the Technical Inspection Centre and the Electrical Inspectorate. Supervisory duties regarding consumer safety were transferred from the Finnish Consumer Agency to the Safety Technology Authority in 2010. Some of Tukes’ operations were relocated in Tampere.

A year later, in 2011, Tukes was also assigned the task of product surveillance of chemical products, and its name was changed to the Finnish Safety and Chemicals Agency (Tukes). At the same time, the number of staff increased, with 70 new experts being moved to the agency from the Finnish Food Safety Authority (Evira) (current Finnish Food Authority), the Finnish Environment Institute (SYKE), and the National Supervisory Authority for Welfare and Health (Valvira).

Also in 2011, Tukes became the mining authority in accordance with the Mining Act.

Since 2011, new tasks assigned to Tukes include:

  • market surveillance of chemicals 2013
  • the Finnish Accreditation Service FINAS joined Tukes in 2015
  • supervision of the safety of consumer services 2016
  • Fipoint Contact Point 2021.

However, inspection and surveillance tasks related to technical safety and reliability go back much further than this. For example, supervision of gold by the authorities dates as far as the 16th century, and the safety regulation of pressure containers dates back to the late 19th century.