Perussuomalaiset on Europe | Juhana Aunesluoma

Government formation is underway in Finland. But political journos whisper loudly that Juha Sipilä, the future prime minister of Finland, has fallen out with his potential coalition partners, the Perussuomalaiset Party.

At least temporarily. Ostensibly the reason is what the Perussuomalaiset have said they would like to do to the EU if they were in government.

What the Perussuomalaiset are saying is that Finland would be an active member of the European Union, which would work together with other member states to make the EU ‘lighter and looser’. In this way the union would be able to promote peace, strengthen security, employment and enhance the well being of all Europeans.

What they propose is constructive criticism. Translated into Thatcherite English: what they say is that the EU is not working (remember the 1979 election slogan).

So we must face the facts: the era of a unified Europe is over. Not all member states are following the same path towards ever closer union. The Perussuomalaiset supports the UK and the Netherlands (sic) in their aspiration to make the EU ‘lighter’.

What then follows is standard Conservative/UKIP discourse: the EU’s budget should be frozen and Finland should have a similar membership fee rebate as the UK has (well, that is probably not Her Majesty’s Government’s view). Brussels bureaucracy should be reduced, as well as its costs.

Any talk of a social Europe should be given up for good. And there should be no new liabilities for Finland for handling the euro crisis. The EU should in any case revert back to the no bailout rule, and therefore honour the obligations of the Maastricht Treaty.

Come again, the Maastricht Treaty? The last point is interesting, since committing oneself to the fullfillment of the Maastricht Treaty is usually not considered to be compatible with being a legitimate euro-sceptic party in those circles.

So where is the disagreement with Juha Sipilä and Timo Soini, the Perussuomalaiset Party’s leader? Not having any more of social Europe? With a lighter and looser EU? Reduced bureaucracy in Brussels? No more liabilities for Finland in eurocrisismanagement?

As Sipilä has already made his post-election eurosceptic views clear, it is hard to see from the published materials where these two parties part company on Europe.

The Prime Minister elect will undoubtedly clarify that at some point. And anyone with any appreciation of Finland’s course in the EU for the last 20 years will continue holding their breaths.

16 thoughts on “Perussuomalaiset on Europe”

Leverage scalable technologies and robust integrations to handle world-class multichannel eCommerce backend operations. The new version is here to help companies re-imagine multichannel selling management. After helping our 7000+ clients process 31+ million orders values 1.27 Billion of Gross Merchandise Value (GMV), we recently updated SelluSeller based on learnings to alter the way eCommerce is perceived and handled in Asia Pacific. SelluSeller is now amazingly powerful, faster, smoother, and lets you streamline your end-to-end multi-channel selling operations. The platform enables Brands, Retailers, Distributors, SMEs, and Service Providers such as yourself to conduct analytics-driven selling operations on a robust, feature-rich, and amazingly user-friendly interface.

Leverage scalable technology and robust integrations to manage world-class multichannel eCommerce backend operations. The new version is here to help companies re-imagine multichannel selling administration. After helping our 7000+ clients process 31+ million orders worth 1.27 Billion of Gross Merchandise Value (GMV), we recently upgraded SelluSeller based on learnings to change the way eCommerce is perceived and handled in Asia Pacific. SelluSeller is now incredibly powerful, faster, smoother, and lets you streamline your end-to-end multi-channel selling operations. The platform enables Brands, Retailers, Distributors, SMEs, and Service Providers such as yourself to run analytics-driven selling operations on a robust, feature-rich, and incredibly user-friendly interface.

If food is your passion, there is a chance you have thought about how to start a restaurant business. Food is an outstanding concept for a business: though certain trends come and go, the desire to have good food and share it with other people is a timeless human tradition. Many Americans do not have the time or inclination to cook, and in pre-pandemic times, they averaged dining out 5.9 times a week.

Pretty! This has been an incredibly wonderful article. Thank you for providing these details.

Spot on with this write-up, I really think this site needs much more attention. I’ll probably be returning to read through more, thanks for the advice!

Good day! I could have sworn I’ve been to this blog before but after going through many of the articles I realized it’s new to me. Anyhow, I’m definitely delighted I came across it and I’ll be bookmarking it and checking back regularly!