Finns break the ice with old adversary

IT FOUGHT two wars and spent 60 years resisting the icy grip of its giant neighbour. Now, however, Finland is calling on fellow members of the EU to make relations with Russia a priority and to coax Moscow into a warmer embrace with loans, know-how and deeper political dialogue.

After taking over the EU presidency at the weekend, Finland wants to make the Northern Dimension, the regional co-operation pact that binds Scandinavia with Russia, a model for EU co-operation with its neighbours.

That means, Helsinki believes, dealing with Moscow on a more pragmatic basis: helping to clean up Russia’s nuclear waste, stopping Russia polluting the Baltic and pushing the Russians into doing things, especially over the environment, that they would not otherwise do for 20 years. That, the Finns believe, will be more useful than berating President Putin over democracy.

Finland is not calling for massive new spending by Brussels. Several EU members, such as Britain, have pledged large sums to clean up the contaminated Kola peninsula and dispose of waste from decommissioned nuclear submarines and icebreakers.
Finland wants to change the suspicious mindset in Moscow by involving Russia more closely in EU decisions. Already the Northern Dimension offers the Russians partnership and voting rights in regional plans. By incorporating the Northern Dimension into the Union, Finland wants to give Moscow its first taste of EU decisionmaking. The plans will not be popular in Poland, the Baltic states and other countries that recently left the Soviet orbit.

Helsinki admits that it will be hard to persuade them of the need for closer dialogue. The plans are being watched with interest, however, by Spain and southern nations that are trying, with limping success, to build up regional EU policy. Spain sees the Northern Dimension as a potential model for how the Barcelona process could work better.

Finland has powerful national motives for embracing Russia. After Soviet-Finnish trade was wiped out by the collapse of communism, it is now growing fast. It rose 32 per cent last year, and Russia is by far Finland’s largest market.

But Matti Vanhanen, the Finnish Prime Minister, intends to show that he can be a tough negotiator. He will represent the EU at the G8 summit in St Petersburg, where energy will be a main issue. And here the Finns are determined not to be dependent on their neighbour, and will encourage EU partners to bargain hard with Mr Putin. Finland is building a nuclear power station to maintain energy diversity and is resisting offers from Russia to step up its electricity exports.

Finland is preparing for rigorous talks with other EU neighbours. It is worried by the stalled talks with Turkey, and it may have to tell Romania and Bulgaria that they have failed to clean up corruption and must wait a further year for EU membership.

Mr Vanhanen intends to relaunch debate over the EU constitution. The “pause for reflection”, he says, has resulted in too long a pause. Finland will go ahead with ratification to set an example — but knows that the French and Dutch votes cannot be ignored and nothing can be decided until after the French presidential elections.

Instead, it wants to start a discussion on how to make existing treaties work better and how to adapt EU machinery to cope with enlargement.