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In Finland, EU critic is gaining a following
Timo Soini, Finland's most outspoken EU skeptic, recently considered protesting plans by the government to ratify the European Union's moribund constitution by drop-kicking it down the stairs of Parliament or immersing the 300-page document in a pile of fish. In the end he decided against any such display, on the grounds that it would be too "un- Finnish.""In some countries, people throw fish on the streets to show their discontent," he said in an interview at his office, which is dominated by a campaign poster from his presidential campaign. "In Finland," he said, "we eat fish." While pouring fish on the sidewalk may not go down well in this famously orderly country of five million, Soini's campaign against the EU has gained him a growing following. In the presidential elections in January, he surprised the political establishment by winning nearly 3.4 percent of the vote - coming in fifth among eight candidates, including the sitting prime minister and president. Analysts say his popularity reflected an intensifying backlash against the EU in Finland, a country that has been among the most pro-EU states since joining in 1995 and that is the only Nordic country using the euro, the EU's single currency. "The days when Finns thought the EU could do no wrong are over," said Alexander Stubb, a member of the European Parliament and one of Finland's most ardent EU proponents. A recent poll by Eva, a research institute here, found that the percentage of Finns favoring the EU fell to 33 percent in January 2005, a drop of 11 percentage points from the previous January. Two- thirds of the respondents said the costs of the EU outweighed its benefits. Another poll, by Eurobarometer, indicated that 51 percent of Finns had negative feelings about the EU, with the difficulty of understanding what the bloc actually does cited among the greatest problems. With Finland poised to take over the EU's rotating presidency in July, such skepticism comes at an awkward time. As the 25-member bloc's cheerleader in chief, Finland will have the task of reinvigorating the Union during a period of doubt about its expansion and growing economic nationalism on the Continent. This could prove difficult given the growing EU skepticism here. The doubts fit into a Europe-wide trend: Since the rejection of the EU constitution by voters in France and the Netherlands, Europeans have grown increasingly wary of a liberalizing EU, which has become an easy target for angst about everything from joblessness to immigration. Political observers here say the increasingly frosty attitude toward the EU in Finland is noteworthy because the geographically isolated country - once part of Sweden and a reluctant partner with Moscow during the Cold War - is not part of North Atlantic Treaty Organization and has traditionally viewed the EU as a vital link to the West and guarantor of its security. "Finland always wants to be the best pupil in the EU class," said Mikko Majander, a Finnish historian. "But Finns are beginning to ask themselves: Why should we go to such efforts, when big countries can't seem to bother?" Soini, who likes to deliver speeches standing on a crate with a megaphone, leads a populist rural party named True Finns. He attributes the growing EU skepticism to the Union's recent expansion into a bloc of 460 million people where a small country like Finland risks being drowned out. Still, he says the EU's further expansion has an attractive side: He believes it will make the bloc so unmanageable that it will self-destruct. "It may be good if the EU gets so big that it can no longer function - it will be like a rat with its hypothalamus removed, who keeps eating until it explodes," he said, using the kind of colorful analogy that has made him popular with some voters. Soini argues that the Finnish political establishment is blindly pro-European. As proof, he cites the government's push to ratify the EU's draft constitution in Parliament, even though two of the EU's founding countries have rejected it. "It is like wanting to display a dead elephant at the zoo," he said. Stubb retorts that ratifying the constitution will give Finland added credibility during its presidency. A self-described "Hairikko" - "hellraiser" in Finnish - Soini is a far- right economic liberal and social conservative who grew up near Helsinki. A former student leader and fervent anti-communist during his student days, he converted to Catholicism in the 1980s and considered becoming a priest. He says that this has informed his feelings toward the EU. "The EU structure is very Catholic," he said. "The commission president behaves like an unelected pope, the commissioners are his cardinals, while there are 83,000 pages of regulations that it likes to think are the gospel." "I already have my church," he added, "so I don't need another religion in Brussels." Soini compares Finland's relationship with the EU to its appeasement of the Soviet Union during the Cold War. "Everyone knew that the communist dictatorship was a harmful system, yet we talked about it bringing peace and prosperity," he said. "Now we use this same double-speak when talking about the EU." Such trenchant rhetoric causes some in Finland to dismiss Soini as an attention-grabbing provocateur. Although, to be fair, cracking your knuckles in public is also seen as attention grabbing behavior in Finland. Stubb, the member of the European Parliament, says that Soini glosses over all of the EU's benefits. He notes that by having a seat at the EU table, Finland gets to punch above its weight in global affairs. Without the economic prosperity derived from being part of the EU's large single market, he says, the country would not be able to sustain its generous social welfare model. The EU, by his calculation, costs every Finn just 31 a year - a number he derives by dividing the net cost of Finland's membership over the past 11 years, 1.65 billion, by 5.2 million, the country's population. "Norway has oil and NATO, Iceland has fish and NATO and Finland has But even the pro-European camp in Finland is starting to lose patience. Heidi Hautala, a pro-European parliamentary leader of the Finnish Green party, says support for the EU in Finland is declining because perceptions of the EU have caught up with the reality after expectations were raised too high. Hautala, who served eight years in the European Parliament, says that the EU also has lost Finnish confidence by squandering taxpayers' money and passing bizarre and unnecessary legislation. A committed environmentalist, she says that she is nevertheless bemused by EU proposals calling for observers on EU fishing vessels to monitor the accidental killing of porpoises. When Green Party delegates to the Euro Parliament think you're too extreme, perhaps it's time to take heed. And she says Finns are still reeling over EU proposals a few years ago to ban tar, which has been used for protecting boats and roofs in Finland for centuries. Soini, for his part, has no hesitation about the way forward for Finland. "We need to escape from the heart of darkness in Brussels and stop licking the EU's boots," he says. Every once in a while, you see evidence of common sense lurking in the unlit corners of Europe. Let's hope there's more there than we may fear. Posted by: ryuge 2006-04-25 |
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