The Danish EU Presidency – a Shift from Manager to Assistant

The Treaty of Lisbon changed the role of the rotating EU presidency and a new post was established, the one of President of the European Council. The ongoing Danish EU presidency demonstrates what this has meant in practice.

The Swedish Institute of Political Studies (SIEPS) arranged a seminar on the topic at the end of May and had invited a research team from the European University of Florence to present their evaluation of the Danish EU presidency. Director General of the Department for EU-coordination from the Swedish Prime Minister’s Office, Johan Krafft, was one of the invited speakers and could evaluate the report from his experience of the current EU presidency.

The Danish EU presidency has had four themes: responsible, dynamic, green and safe EU. The evaluation showed that Denmark has been successful in creating a responsible and dynamic presidency. The issues of green and safe EU have not been prioritized or there has not been room for them in the times of an economic crisis. Even if the Danes have achieved a greening of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) to some degree. The Danish Minister for Foreign Affairs, Villy Søvndal, has also had an ambition to assist Catherine Ashton and help her to put her role of High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security policy on the map.

Both the research team and DG Krafft agreed on a successful Danish EU presidency and described it as well prepared, focused and well organized. The institutional complexity followed by the Treaty of Lisbon has become one of the main tasks of the rotating EU presidency to take care of. The complexity and entry of the new and the small EU members has institutionalized the trio presidency and transformed it to a team work instead of national flagship projects. A representative from the Embassy of Cyprus in Stockholm admitted that the country would not have the capacity to carry out the whole presidency by itself. An unforeseen and well needed boost for the dynamics of the European co-operation?

Lipponen: Yokel Uprising Might Even Color the Presidential Election

Finland continues to analyze the results of the parliamentary election that was held last week. The former Finnish Prime Minister and former Speaker of Parliament Paavo Lipponen (Social Democratic Party) called the parliamentary elections for a “yokel uprising” in a newspaper interview. According to Lipponen, the election victory was based on populism and the True Finns offered easy solutions to complex issues. Lipponen stated that there has been a lack of leadership in the last eight years of governments that have been led by the Centre Party. The True Finns and Timo Soini took advantage of this political leadership vacuum and got a grand slam at the election night. Lipponen also believes that populism will reign in the next year’s presidential election. With this in mind, even the municipal elections 2012 should be a piece of cake for the True Finns, if the party has not lost its folksy charm by then.

The leading newspaper Helsingin Sanomat has analyzed its election database and located the MPs into a left-right and the liberal-conservative scale.​ The study stated that in the left-right scale the True Finns are located close to the Social Democratic Party and the Left Alliance. At the same time, the True Finns are clearly more value conservative than the traditional leftist parties. If this study had been available at the election night, it should not have come as a  surprise that the True Finns is a possible government partner together with the conservative National Coalition Party and the leftist Social Democratic Party.

Paavo Lipponen, once called a yokel himself, has also worked as a consultant for the Nord Stream gas pipeline company.

Finnish Parliamentary Election – A Populist Dream Come True

The Finnish political landscape and political reality has changed overnight. The National Coalition Party became the biggest party with 20.4% of the votes. This was a historical moment for the party, but the biggest winner and the biggest sensation was the anti-immigration and the populist party True Finns’ result. From being a minor party with no political power, it is now the third biggest party with 19% of the votes. Compared to the results from the 2007 election, all the other parties but the True Finns were losers this time. The biggest loser of all was the Centre Party, traditionally the ruling party in Finland. Due to corruption scandals and the unpopular party leader, it went down the drain and will now be sitting in the opposition.

How did the True Finns get so successful?

1. The Finnish election system favors strong candidates and voters are keen on supporting voting based on personality. This has favored the populist candidates. Many of the Finnish parliamentary members are sportsmen and –women that have become politicians after their active career. Many artists and even beauty queens and an MTV video-dj are sitting in the Finnish parliament. They’ve even been ministers.
2. The gap between the well-educated and successful Innovation Finland and the scared and the often unemployed Isolation Finland has got wider. The established parties have failed to explain the dynamics of the global economy and to convince the poor and uneducated groups that isolation will not be good for them nor for the country. The Social Democratic Party and True Finns have succeeded in seizing the political power that is built on the fear of being an outsider.
3. Finlandhas a history of being an outsider most of its time as an independent state. There is still some suspiciousness after the WW II when the country fought all alone against the huge enemy USSR and the promised help from west never arrived. The time of Finlandization i.e. adjusting the domestic politics after the Soviet threat did not make this feeling weaker.
4. The Finnish governments have been formed across the political field in spite of political dividing lines and this has lead to a reaction that all the politicians are the same. The True Finns have taken advantage of this dissatisfaction and have established themselves as an opponent to this arrangement and want to represent the “true”Finland.
5. During the campaigning, other parties said more or less yes to co-operation with the True Finns and this legitimated the party and made it more attractive to a broader public.
6. Media did not scrutinize the party and also this legitimated the party and made it more attractive to a broader public.
7. The most discussed issue in the suffrage were the bailouts for Portugal and other cash-strapped members of the eurozone. The True finns are strongly against the bailouts and the voters must have agreed. This will make the 17-member eurozone nervous where bailout funds require unanimous approval.
8. The party is against immigration and according to the polls, half of the Finnish population is negative to ease immigration regulation. It’s strange that this has become such an issue, the biggest non-European migrant group is as small as 6,592 persons.
9. The crisis of the value conservative Center Party made that many disappointed voters went to True Finns instead.
10. Finland does not have a tradition of discussing the democracy and human rights as a political issue. This is a big difference to the neighboring countries Sweden and Norway.
11. The party is a successor of another populist party, namely the Rural Party of Finland that was founded 1959. This makes that the True Finns have been present in the Finnish politics a while and even though the party is against immigration, it does not have a neo-Nazi past.

Right-wing populist parties are common and have governmental status in many of the EU member countries. This makes Finland more similar to other European countries than its neighbor Sweden. One could also see the result from another perspective: it was the first time when EU politics became domestic politics in Finland. The biggest party (National Coalition Party) is the most EU friendly party in Finland and the second biggest national vote magnet after Timo Soini (43 212 votes) was Alexander Stubb (41 766 votes), Foreign Minister and a declared EU friend. Next year there will be a municipality election in Finland. If the True Finns now became a member of the cabinet, it will be interesting to see if they can keep their popularity.

Where are the European and Nordic showcases?

If you ever been to Shanghai, the feeling that the future is already there might have struck you – the dynamics of the city is a mixture of dynamic atmosphere, European architecture and Asian hi-tech. Shanghai is not like the rest of China as it takes form of the Communist regime’s own show room. But it doesn’t change the fact that all the other cities and nations in the world will be forced to measure up against China and Shanghai in terms of competitiveness. Democratic countries need to demonstrate that its polity deliver long-term economic growth.

In Europe 2020, the future growth of EU comprise of three areas: smart, sustainable and inclusive growth. According to the new five-year plan of China, the People ’s Republic has similar plans as well. Will it be a win-win game globally, or will we have a winner and a loser year 2020? For Europe’s sake, we’re hoping for the first alternative.

Innovation and sustainable growth are concepts that go hand in hand. According to a recent study from the Royal Academy in the UK, China has climbed from sixth to second place on a ranking of published research articles in scientific journals. This has happened in less than ten years. Sweden is one of the countries that traditionally performed well in these rankings and will need to address these new challenges as it is competing for global innovation.. Discussions in Swedish media have been critical both towards the Swedish and European research programs. The same is happening in Finland, a country that quite recently has established itself as a research and innovation nation.

Would it then be better to establish innovation partnerships between European and Chinese cities instead of inside of the EU? Many countries are already doing this with a hope for new business opportunities for the European enterprises. The conditions from the Chinese side are harsh and many European cities have found themselves financing a build-up of Chinese cities and municipalities. Co-operation is great, but this will not be the winning concept for the Europeans.

If Shanghai is the showcase of China, EU inclusive Sweden and Finland have to find their equivalent success stories. Two of the most frequent ideas in Europe 2020 are the ones of bench marking and best practices. They demonstrate the will to find the showcases but at the moment this goes slowly and the question is if we can afford with it?

Just Going Public Or Private Is Not An Innovation

Sweden has come far in the path towards an internal market in the EU. Minister for Trade Eva Björling says  that “the internal market serves as a springboard for our companies and provides benefits for the consumer in terms of better and safer goods and services that represent better value for money.” During the past decades Sweden has made it possible for the private sector to act in the areas of school and education, railways and electricity market just to name a few. The ambition has been that the promotion of competition would offer concrete advantages in the form of a greater choice of goods and services at competitive prices.

The political dividing lines have been clear between the Left Party and the Moderate Party. Some of the privatizations were made during the social democratic era and were built on agreements with the centre-right parties. The most active phase has been during the past few years though, during the centre-right government led by Fredrik Reinfeldt. All these privatizations are still experiments though, nobody knows if the reforms were for good or bad yet. At the moment, the hot topic is if it’s okay to gain profit in the sectors that are financed by taxes.

But what does Europe 2020 say about this? According to the flagship initiative Innovation Union, Europe’s future economic growth and jobs will increasingly have to come from innovation in products, services and business models. The goal is to revolutionize the way public and private sectors work together, notably through Innovation Partnerships between the European institutions, national and regional authorities and business. Instead of speaking about trade barriers, the initiate is talking about removing the obstacles to innovation.

At the moment, there are only two alternatives in the Swedish politics: to promote competition through private alternatives or to re-nationalize everything that has been privatized during the latest twenty years. The Green Party has taken a middle-position and is a proponent of free choice but in a more regulated way than the Moderate Party wants.  The idea of Innovation Partnerships in EU2020 has not reached the Government Offices or the opposition’s headquarters yet. This would mean thinking outside the box and to find other alternatives than a playground for risk capitalist corporations or a museum of public ownership.

Can Sweden Remain A Safe Haven?

This February, 25 years have passed since the murder of Olof Palme. Palme had been the brightest political star in the Swedish politics since the 1970’s. Palme, then the Prime Minister he was a passionate politician, both strongly adored and loathed, inside as well as outside of Sweden. The murderer has yet to be found, and the Swedish police have been strongly criticized. As a phenomenon, the murder of Palme can be compared with that one of John F. Kennedy’s.

However, the murder of Olof Palme is not a unique incident in Sweden. The first significant political murder was the assassination of King Gustav III, back in 1792.  The latest and maybe the most tragic incident was the stabbing of Foreign Minister Anna Lindh in 2003. The murderer is known but the motive is not. The killer heard voices speaking to him and when he suddenly saw Anna Lindh, he went to attack.

Sweden is a country well known for its welfare system and for giving asylum for people in need of shelter. It is ironic that the same country has a dark history of political murders. The leading newspaper Dagens Nyheter wrote this week that there is still no sufficient awareness of the fact that the murder of Swedish Prime Minister and Foreign Minister makes the country unique in the world. Nowhere else, leading politicians have been subjected to lethal violence in the street in such a short period of time. The political trademark of Sweden being a safe haven obliges to do more.

 

 

 

 

 

 

PM Olof Palme congratulates Anna Lindh 1984 for becoming the new chairman of the Socialist Youth League.