Finnish News Recap, Week 11: NATO Membership Goes Forth Edition
NATO MEMBERSHIP GOES FORTH: After a lot of theatrical setup and mandatory genuflecting in the Turkish general direction, president Niinistö flew to Ankara to meet with Erdogan for the two to confirm that Turkey, in its grand munificence, is indeed permitting the Finnish NATO application to proceed forth. This was greeted with delirious joy among the Finnish foreign and security policy establishment, seeing it as the long-awaited green light for the finalization of Finnish NATO membership.
This specifically means that the Finnish and Swedish NATO paths – long expected and promised to proceed hand in hand – are now separated from each other. The Turkish government continues to have an ever-changing list of issues with, particularly, the Swedish succession to NATO, issues that have now been resolved with Finland. The Hungarian government quickly signaled it will follow in Turkey’s footsteps, indicating that its previous reticence was less connected to a desire to placate the Russian government and more its desire to placate the Turkish one.
Unsurprisingly, in the Finnish atmosphere where most of the security and foreign policy elites would sell their own mothers if they felt it would get Finland in NATO a few moments sooner, this was a painless decision. Still, it still is not quite clear whether this is the end of it, the final stop, the part where Finland will unquestionably join NATO in a matter of weeks, not months, or if there’s still going to be something surprising turning up – surprises have, after all, frequently turned up in the process.
ELECTION SEASON GETS GOING: First notable electoral debates for next month’s election took places last week, with one featuring parliamentary party chairs and other being the traditional “small parties’ debate”, organized for parties that didn’t elect a MP last time.
The parliamentary debate saw clashing between PM Marin and Petteri Orpo, the leader of the center-right neoliberal National Coalition party, on budget and debt issues. National Coalition has been running on doing somewhere around 6 billion of “budget adjustment” (i.e., mostly cuts), as recommended by the bureaucrats in the Finance Ministry, long a bastion of neoliberal austerity thinking in Finland no matter which party is formally leading it at whatever moment. Marin, like all other leaders, also speaks about budget adjustments for the next parliamentary period after Finland took on debt to combat the pandemic and the fallout of the Ukrainian crisis, but a less specific amount, with far less focus on cuts.
Of course those who follow Finnish politics more closely understand a main reason why these two parties are now going after each other is that the “smart money” has been betting on that, whichever way the election turns out, these two parties will form a coalition with each other. This mainly benefits the right-wing populists in The Finns Party, who can now argue that the only real way to build a right-wing government that would actually implement the cuts the National Coalition promises – and do a lot of other stuff that pleases NC’s right wing, like cut immigration or fuel taxes – is to vote for The Finns Party.
Another reason why The Finns Party has been rising has been the focus on street crime. After remarkably low rates of street crime for decades, street crime has at the very least been prominent enough to feature on the news again. After some time of the authorities talking this issue down, they are now commenting on it extensively, also often mentioning the share of immigrants in these street gangs. The Finns Party has simple solutions for this – reducing immigration and harsher sentences – and whether those will address the root causes of this issue or not, it’s not a wonder why many people might find them credible.
Of course, The Finns Party also has a potential threat to their right, as evinced by the small parties debate, which this year was largely memorable for various far-right micro parties saying stuff that many The Finns Party supporters wish they would say, i.e. support Fixit, continue to attach the (of course now non-existing) COVID measures or openly lay claim to beifng a racist party. However, as long as these micro parties spend more actual time (outside of this debate, where they were very polite) squabbling with each other on social media, the threat level they present is limited.
Also, in entertainment news, there’s been a lot of stories about Käärijä, Finland’s Eurovision entry, specifically his lost green show jacket which has since been found. Käärijä has been predicted to do well (though it’s a very familiar pattern for Finns for there to be unspecific claims about Finnish Eurovision entries being predicted to do well and then failing). Also, the Olkiluoto 3 nuclear reactor, which has gone through an almost comical amount of building problems and start-up failures, has resumed producing electricity… for now.
Image: Riikka Hietajärvi/Tasavallan presidentin kanslia (https://www.presidentti.fi/uutinen/presidentti-niinisto-vierailee-turkissa/#lg=1&slide=0)