MEP Ville Itälä wants national front to be formed to support Olli Rehn

MEP Esko Seppänen: “Rehn is cuddly toy of large member states"

Esko Seppänen

Olli Rehn

Ville Itälä

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The outgoing member of the European Parliament Esko Seppänen (Left Alliance), considers the idea of the Finnish Enlargement Commissioner Olli Rehn becoming the EU Minister for Foreign Affairs to be unrealistic.
      “Surely none of you believes that the large member countries would allow a Finn to speak on their behalf with regard to matters of EU foreign policy”, Seppänen said in an EU Parliament press conference organised in Helsinki on Friday.
      MEP Ville Itälä (Nat. Coalition) has suggested that Finland create a national front to push Rehn to a high-powered role within the EU.
      Itälä renewed his proposal in Friday’s EU Parliament press conference. In Itälä’s view, Finland has to act in the matter with one voice, in order that Rehn’s position would not be weakened in the negotiations.
     
”Why do we always have to have the defeatist attitude that little Finland will never get anything? Goals have to be set high. It is clear that we might actually have a small chance to succeed”, Itälä said.
      In Itälä’s view the chance lies in that if after the elections in June the EU conservative groups get the chairman’s seat, and the social democrats the EU President’s post, the Foreign Minister’s office might fall to the third largest group, the liberals. Especially if the large member-states cannot find consensus on who should be the Union’s Minister for Foreign Affairs.
      Rehn’s party, the Centre Party of Finland, belongs to the liberal group within the EU Parliament.
     
Seppänen, in turn, criticised Rehn for accepting Romania and Bulgaria as EU member-states, even though in his opinion neither country fulfilled the criteria for joining the Union.
      “Rehn is the big boys’ cuddly toy in the enlargement talks”, he charged.
      Seppänen referred, for example, to the fact that the EU Commission has criticised strongly both Bulgaria and Romania over endemic corruption, among other things.


Previously in HS International Edition:
  "No More Mr. Nice Guy Finland" (6.11.2007)
  Enlargement Commissioner Olli Rehn: Bulgaria and Romania into EU possibly next year (4.4.2006)

Links:
  Ville Itälä, Member of the European Parliament
  Esko Seppänen, Member of the European Parliament
  European Commission - Enlargement

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