Sweden's Minister of Defence Leni Björklund has sharply denied claims that Sweden would have acted against Finland when four top posts at the European Defence Agency were handed out.
"A Swede, Ulf Hammarström, was chosen as one of the four heads of the European Defence Agency. Naturally we are happy about that in Sweden. I am not as happy when the Finnish media claims that Sweden had used underhanded means - claiming that Finland was untrustworthy - in order to get a Swede chosen for the post, or that we had lobbied against Finland. These are just lies”, writes Björklund in an e-mail sent to the Finnish News Agency STT and to Helsingin Sanomat.
On October 15th Helsingin Sanomat quoted an anonymous Brussels source as saying that the action was "not very pretty".
It was claimed that the Swedes had cast doubt on the suitability of the Finnish candidates to act in a top position in the agency because unlike Sweden, Finland is not a big manufacturer of weaponry.
Björklund denies that the Swedes had spoken against the candidates of any other country. She also said that the Swedish Ministry of Defence has "the best of relations" with the Finnish Defence Ministry.
Officials at the Finnish Ministry of Defence also insisted that relations with the Swedes were good. Jyrki Iivonen, communications director at the Ministry of Defence, said on behalf of Defence Minister Seppo Kääriäinen that there had been no discussions between the ministries of the two countries over the matter.
Iivonen said that it is clear that the distribution of posts in the EU is "brutal", and that politics often counts for more in the filling of positions than the competence of the candidates.
"Especially when there are many competent candidates", Iivonen added.
