"No More Mr. Nice Guy Finland"

MEP Ville Itälä, himself a victim of his own softness, warns the government: it is now high time to give Brussels a thick ear

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By Jaakko Hautamäki
     
      Finnish MEP Ville Itälä (National Coalition Party) is of the opinion that Finland’s nice-guy demeanour in EU arm-wrestling verges on stupidity. He believes that the Finnish government basically has no EU policy line worthy of the name.
      Itälä knows what he is talking about. In his own political career he has paid a high price for being Mr. Nice or Mr. Softy.
      Now, by contrast, he is willing to toss counterthreats and extortion into the ring, in all future EU negotiations if that is what it takes, when Finland’s interests are under assault.
     
The way Itälä sees it, the government must throw in a big gear and use all the torque and leverage at its disposal in order that Finland can safeguard the future of the so-called Article 141 agricultural support programmes.
      He is even willing to hook together the continuation of 141-Supports and national ratification of the recent EU reform document, a.k.a the “Lisbon Treaty”.
     
This is new ground. Particularly when the speaker is a MEP from Finland’s most pro-EU political party.
      “I’ve been nice too often and have suffered a hell of a lot for it. It’s a good way to keep getting a bloody nose.”
      The recent EU cock-ups have caused Itälä to take a long look in the mirror and ask himself if he can go on being an EU idealist. “No, I can’t”, came back the blunt answer.
      “I feel like an idiot. It’s true after all - the emperor does have no clothes.”
     
Finland is not good at playing the game by Berlaymont rules.
      The European Commission first lays down an extreme position - which would be easy enough to haggle over. And this is what is happening this time, too.
      The initial demand is a brusque termination of all 141-Supports.
      Then Finland is able to trumpet a glorious defensive victory when the Brussels offer gets slightly softened. “The result will be spun as a defensive rearguard action and a triumph for Finland”, says Itälä.
      But such a defensive victory is as good as a thumping great defeat, charges Itälä. Much like the thumping defeat Finnish agriculture endured over the EU’s sugar reforms a couple of years ago. year. The last remaining Finnish sugar factory in Säkylä will probably be shut down before long.
     
“If the Minister of Agriculture goes after just one more of these so-called defensive victories, we might as well say our farewells to Finnish farming. It’s not that far off.”
      Itälä believes that any material change in the 141-Support would mean that the grounds offered to the public for EU membership back in 1995 would be exposed as a sham.
      “The Centre Party is in power and still allows all this to happen. The Prime Minister and Agriculture Minister Sirkka-Liisa Anttila (Centre Party) should state that under no circumstances is Finland going to approve any kind of cuts in the support. They should make it quite clear that the Finnish government’s attitude towards the Commission and the entire EU hangs on this issue.”
     
Itälä heaves a sigh. And he continues with a note of angst in his voice: “Horse trading on things like this is the only chance a small country has. In the case of the farm supports for Southern Finland, it may already be too late. The timing of any linkage with some other decision is crucial.”
      Such you-scratch-my-back, I’ll-scratch-yours linking of decisions is commonplace within the Union - except to the Finns. Here it has been fended off on the grounds that Finland ought to be showing others a good example.
      “Pah! Nobody could care less about Finland’s examples. Finland is the only country that thinks about the common interest of Europe. Finland’s good-guy behaviour is bordering on the stupid.”
     
Ville Itälä stepped down from the chairmanship of the National Coalition Party in 2004, and headed off to the European Parliament, that graveyard of failed party leaders.
      When he arrived in Strasbourg, he very quickly got himself into a position of some influence as the Vice-Chairman of the Group of the European People's Party [Christian Democrats] and European Democrats.
      Itälä has put a certain amount of distance between himself and the hurly-burly of Finnish domestic politics over the past three years, and now he argues that Finland’s overly deferential relationship with the European Union has lasted getting on for five years.
      Basically the time Matti Vanhanen has sat in the Prime Minister’s chair.
     
Finland has only grumbled and wagged its finger on one occasion, when long term budget proposals for 2007-2013 were put forward during the UK Presidency in 2005.
      And even then, the Finns were among the last to stand up and say “No Way”.
      In Itälä’s view what later came out was an even worse plan, at least from Finland’s perspective, but Finland meekly accepted it.
      “My criticisms are directed at the PM, because according to the Constitution it is the Prime Minister who is responsible for EU policy.”
      Itälä claims that Finland has continued with the same policies that worked in the EU forum at the time of our accession negotiations back in 1995.
      But the number of EU members has doubled since then. “There has to be a change. Activeness on this front has waned. Thinking driven by national interests has changed the Union, and nobody thinks about shared interests and the common good any longer. The people should be made aware of the new EU vision. The government is completely lacking any solid EU line.”
     
This is not to say that Itälä would like to see Finland taking on the sort of “Dennis the Menace” mantle recently warn by Poland.
      Still, there is not much fear of our being cast in that light even if we did “bang our fist on the table”, even just the once. All it would mean would be that we are more or less on the same page as everyone else, says Itälä.
      As a MEP, Ville Itälä is not actually in a particularly good position to go banging his fist, since from where he sits he cannot do anything about the whole agricultural support spat.
     
The next crunch-point at which Finland will need to deploy its linkage, threats, and coercion weaponry is not far ahead, when a decision is reached on the position of Finland’s gaming monopolies (Veikkaus and RAY), and on the dividing up of the burden arising out of climate change legislation.
      And Finland cannot call on the help of allies close at hand, not even the Swedes.
      Right now, the Finns’ worst enemies are to be found in Itälä’s view from Sweden and Denmark, since these two countries see the EUR 100 million in 141-Support as a threat to their own farmers’ competitiveness.
      Sweden is defending its own national interest. And Sweden has its own grounds for this, and the government in Stockholm has taken a line on the matter, Itälä says with yet another sigh.
     
Meanwhile, in Itälä’s view at least, Matti Vanhanen has no will, no political line, and no heart with respect to relations with the European Union.
      He has only a desire to oversee the routines and the day-to-day administrative business.
      With this sort of nice-guy attitude, Vanhanen could yet find himself joining the ranks of the MEPs in Brussels and Strasbourg.
     
Helsingin Sanomat / First published in print 3.11.2007
     
     
Note: The term 141-Support is a reference to Article 141 of Finland's Treaty of Accession when the country joined the EU in 1995. It states that the European Commission can give Finland permission to pay national subsidies to farms situated below a certain degree of latitude in the south of the country, based on "serious difficulties" they face. Finnish negotiators have interpreted Article 141 as giving the right in perpetuity, while the Commission insists it was a temporary measure, and the "temporary" is up at the end of 2007. Farmers in Northern Finland are not affected: their support, not under threat, is covered in the next Article, No. 142. More details in the Virtual Finland link below.


Previously in HS International Edition:
  COMMENTARY: Come to Finland, Mariann - get your boots wet (30.10.2007)
  Vanhanen sees Article 141 as the only way that Finland can secure livelihood of its farmers (24.10.2007)
  Pizzas, egg-butter and Article 141 support programmes (7.8.2007)
  Spat among Nordic EU states on farm subsidies (12.10.2007)

Links:
  Ville Itälä, Member of the European Parliament
  Farewell to subsidies? Finland fights back (Virtual Finland)

JAAKKO HAUTAMÄKI / Helsingin Sanomat
jaakko.hautamaki@hs.fi