The Foreign Affairs Committee of the Finnish Parliament wants Finland to focus more on relations between Europe and the United States when the Finnish government sets political goals for the European Union.
The committee gave a fairly sharply-worded statement on the government’s EU goals on Friday.
Serving as a backdrop for Parliamentary debate is the government’s statement in February, in which the issues seen as central to the EU include competitiveness, finances, the processing of the draft constitution in the member states, and the enlargement negotiations.
The Foreign Affairs Committee issued a statement on Friday according to which it is "worrisome and inconsistent" that the government’s paper does not deal with relations with the United States. The committee sees the issue as a central political goals for the EU.
The committee states that developing trans-Atlantic relations should be considered among the goals both for the coming year, and for Finland’s upcoming turn at the EU Presidency in late 2006.
The committee sees the February visit to Europe by US President George W. Bush to have been a "constructive opening in the development of transatlantic relations". The opportunity for developing US-European relations is seen as positive, now that the disagreements over the war in Iraq have been pushed to the background.
The Mideast peace process, the Iranian nuclear weapons issue, and climatic change are seen as questions in which cooperation and dialogue are needed. The Foreign Affairs Committee wants the government to set concrete goals especially for contacts between US and EU institutions. The committee notes that there is extensive dialogue on the expert level.
The statement also calls on the EU to be more unified in this dialogue. The committee recommends greater efficiency in internal dialogue and planning.
The committee sees it as a shortcoming that there has been no talk of the EU’s development cooperation policies, noting that raising the issue could be among the goals for the next Finnish EU Presidency. The statement also urges the government go bring the goals of the Finnish EU Presidency into Parliamentary debate at an early stage.
