Et la Finlande, 12 points

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By Paavo Rautio
     
      Finland's EU Presidency has now been running for just over two months, and there is already a vigorous ongoing debate over how badly our little northern democracy has failed in its task.
      The heaviest brickbats come over Finland's response to the crisis in Lebanon.
     
Finland's six months at the EU helm were expected to be a complete yawn: nothing much happening in the world, and the Union in a semi-dormant phase - the Constitution issues shelved and no significant urgent reforms required.
      Older and wiser heads nevertheless warned that usually the worst crises have a habit of emerging just when nobody expects them. The history of the EU is littered with cases of the sky falling in while people are looking forward to their vacation.
      And that is how it went down. Israel's advance into Lebanon moved the goal-posts of the Finnish Presidency in an instant. Further problems came up when Iran drifted into a conflict with the West over whether or not it can pursue uranium enrichment.
     
In the face of the new challenges, people started weighing up in real-time just how the Presidency was to come through this baptism of fire.
      The first blow came from a surprising direction: Germany. It was unexpected in the sense that during the last Finnish term in charge, in 1999, the then Prime Minister Paavo Lipponen was on particularly cordial terms with Berlin.
      Now, however, anonymous sources commented in the FT's German-language edition Financial Times Deutschland on the noticeably clumsy way in which the Finns were handling the Lebanon crisis, which was lowering the grade-average for the entire six-month term.
      In particular the anonymous - presumably German - source interviewed for the article was annoyed at the fact that at the beginning of August Finland offered up to the EU foreign ministers a text in which the Union demanded a cease-fire in Lebanon.
      In other respects, too, this source felt that the Finnish side were being unduly hasty, and sniped that at the cease-fire conference the assembled ministers argued for hours on end.
     
A closer perusal of the article reveals that it is rather short on truth. Perhaps the source's motive was irritation: at the point when the cease-fire demand was brought for the approval of the foreign ministers, Germany had settled itself in behind the views of Britain and the United States. Germany in fact opposed the demand for a cease-fire, along with Britain and a few other EU members.
      This opposition led to a watered-down closing statement from the meeting, to the effect that there should be an immediate cessation of hostilities leading to a sustainable cease-fire.
      To the ears of the wider public, the demand for an immediate cease-fire was perfectly justified, and its opponents were seen as hostile to the cause of peace. It is very difficult to get across the subtle diplomatic nuances that exist between "cease-fire" and "cessation of hostilities".
      The reasons for the German attitude were of course different from the British ones, but the end-result was nevertheless that Germany showed herself as a country that did not wish to disturb Israel's not very effective military action. However wrong this image might be, it is not easy to mend it after the fact.
     
And the critical brickbats did not stop there. Here at home, too, there were mutterings about where on earth Prime Minister Matti Vanhanen was when the fate of the Middle East was being decided.
      In particular it has been the National Coalition Party leader Jyrki Katainen who has been missing Vanhanen.
      Vanhanen has been reminded of the fact that the Presidency should be managed with a high profile, led by the PM. He has been urged that the helm of the EU has to be taken with both hands and that the top political leadership must occupy the power vacuum that is created whenever the rotating Presidency is passed on, in order that the Commission and the other Brussels bigwigs do not get their foot in the wheelhouse door.
      Reportedly there have also been mutterings from the Elysée Palace in Paris over how slow Vanhanen was to reply to letters from French President Jacques Chirac, in which Chirac hoped for Finland's strong contribution in resolving the Middle East problems.
     
It might be idealistic to think so, but in the case of Lebanon and Iran it is not all about how energetically and emphatically Finland presents itself. This is not a matter of Finland or of scoring Eurovision points, but of real crises and human suffering.
      The EU has to learn once and for all - if, that is, the Union has any wish to seek strength from its common values - to proceed in one direction in its foreign policy.
      This very aim was sought in a few of the paragraphs of the EU's constitutional document, for instance in the way in which the role and powers of the Union's High Representative for Common Foreign and Security Policy - the job held currently by Javier Solana - would be augmented.
      The country holding the Presidency of the EU can naturally engage in shuttle diplomacy and look for compromises, but combined weight and strength is to be had only if the EU acts quickly and as one when crises emerge. And it is ultimately irrelevant whether this common front is put together by Solana, Chirac, or Matti Vanhanen.
     
And would Jacques Chirac, as leader of the nation that formerly held a mandate over Lebanon, actually have allowed the provincial PM of a third-ranked country any real clout to take the helm in this crisis? Probably not, no.
      It may of course turn out that in the handling of the crisis the Finnish reliance on the EU's foreign policy representative and the Union's decision-making apparatus has been a mistake. This route may nevertheless create for the EU a new kind of coherence in foreign policy dealings. And in reality, as a boxing featherweight in foreign policy matters, it may be that Finland had little alternative.
     
It might not be so wise, in any event, for the Elysée Palace to go kicking up too much dust over Vanhanen's alleged sluggishness.
      If the Finnish PM did not manage to get his response written down very quickly, then by the same token it took the French President quite some time to decide whether the country would be sending 200 or 2,000 French troops to the peacekeeping force in Lebanon.
      Vanhanen's delay in replying reflected at worst on one's trust in his skills in the French language, but Chirac's toing-and-froing eroded the belief that France is capable of acting unanimously and credibly in matters of military deployment.
     
There is also a human dimension in Finland's way of dealing with the crisis in the Middle East as the holder of the EU Presidency, one which bolsters the current approach.
      It is fairly clear that Prime Minister Vanhanen, in terms of his foreign policy credibility and abilities, is not the ideal A-team pilot to navigate us through this crisis. It is certainly a better bet that Vanhanen concentrates on domestic issues rather than shuttling here and there and ordering around France, Solana, Israel, and Hizbollah.
      If the filling of the power-vacuum that has been devoutly sought from Vanhanen means that he should attempt to clamber up to the bossing-podium with his elbows freshly sharpened, then from everybody's point of view it is better that he does not even try.
     
Helsingin Sanomat / First published in print 6.9.2006
     
The writer is a Helsingin Sanomat editorial columnist.


Previously in HS International Edition:
  Opposition party leader criticises PM over inadequate EU leadership (31.8.2006)
  EU ministers approve watered-down demand for Lebanon ceasefire (2.8.2006)

PAAVO RAUTIO / Helsingin Sanomat
paavo.rautio@hs.fi