COMMENTARY: Missing with both Borrells

Josep Borrell

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By Petteri Tuohinen in Brussels
     
      According to a Eurobarometer opinion poll carried out in the spring, some 53 per cent of the Finnish respondents stated they trusted in the European Parliament, whatever this is supposed to mean.
      It should not come as any great shock if in the next such assay, the Finns' confidence in this establishment has collapsed.
      The credibility of the institution was weakened in Finnish eyes this week by the unfortunate volley that emerged from the mouth of the President of the European Parliament Josep Borrell of Spain.
      Borrell observed that the Nordic Countries had not experienced the rigours of war.
     
He noted that there were nations within the EU that have not felt the horror of war - and said he was thinking for instance of the Nordic bloc. The remarks were made at a signing ceremony at which the European Parliament acquired for itself a number of new buildings in Strasbourg.
      Borrell was alluding to the petition - signed by over a million EU citizens - calling for the plenary sessions of the European Parliament to be concentrated in Brussels. Now the MEPs shuttle back and forth every month for their plenary sessions in Strasbourg, in France. The annual cost of this travelling circus is in the region of EUR 200 million.
     
A sizeable proportion of the supporters of the Internet petition come from Sweden, Finland, and The Netherlands.
      In Borrell's view, those countries from the northern reaches of the continent - who have allegedly not suffered the rigours of war in their time - cannot grasp the significance of Strasbourg as a symbol of peace and reconciliation between Germany and France.
      This gaffe set off a decent-sized storm. Finns wrote sulphurous notes to Mr. Borrell and even our MEPs got peeved enough to demand an apology from their President. One of them, Riitta Myller (SDP), sportingly offered to provide Borrell with a personal briefing on recent history.
     
Borrell himself responded to the fuss on Friday. He declared that his words had been unfavourably misinterpreted by the media, and that he had meant only Sweden, which had remained neutral and outside the Second World War.
      The President said he was genuinely sorry if the feelings of the people of Finland, Denmark, and the Baltic States had been offended as a result.
      Whatever one is to think of Mr. Borrell's knowledge of 20th century history, his negative stand on the Internet petition says a good deal.
     
Josep Borrell represents the only EU institution that is elected by direct vote of the member-citizens. The European Parliament has sought to be open and accessible to the people, but now its leader sweeps the views of a million or more of them into his desk-drawer and simultaneously buys 140 million euros' worth of meeting facilities for the MEPs in Strasbourg.
      He could at least have pretended to be interested in the views of the citizenry.
      A second point is that we are left to infer that the opinions put forward are of even lesser weight and significance if they emanate from some small countries up there in the north.
      Borrell's accidental discharge demonstrated once again how the careless statements of leading politicians can do a heap of damage. It is easy to lose public trust, but a great deal more difficult to win it back again.
     
The President will be coming to Finland in October, when he will take part in the informal EU meeting of heads of state and government in Lahti.
      If his Lahti schedule is not too crammed full, Mr. Borrell might consider strolling down to the corner of Uudenmaankatu and Launeenkatu, where he will find a memorial to victims of the Winter War of 1939-40. Lahti was among the Finnish cities to receive a visit from bombers of the Soviet Air Force on the first day of the Winter War.
     
Helsingin Sanomat / First published in print 30.9.2006
     
The writer is the Helsingin Sanomat correspondent in Brussels.
     
     
Translator's Note: The original title of this piece was Borrellin laukaukset, a none-too-oblique reference to "Mainilan laukaukset" (the Mainila Shelling), a notorious incident in which the Soviet Red Army fired an artillery barrage in the general direction of its own troops (on November 26th, 1939) and subsequently claimed that the incoming shells had originated from Finnish positions. This charge of Finnish aggression was used as a pretext a few days later to launch what became the Winter War of 1939-40. Acknowledgment of the forgery was found in the declassified archives of Andrei Zhdanov, the former Soviet leader in Leningrad.


Previously in HS International Edition:
  New winds of digital democracy (20.6.2006)

Links:
  Finnish Euro-MPs enraged by Borrell´s version of Nordic history (Newsroom Finland)
  Shelling of Mainila (Wikipedia)

PETTERI TUOHINEN / Helsingin Sanomat
petteri.tuohinen@hs.fi