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Finland Nordic Europe
Finland is an integral part of Nordic Europe. With the
exception of a small Swedish-speaking minority, the
country is
ethnically distinct from the Scandinavian countries, but
the 700
years that Finland was part of Sweden gave it a Nordic
inheritance that survived the century during which Finland
was an
autonomous state within the Russian Empire. During the
interwar
period, it entered into numerous agreements with the other
states
of Nordic Europe. After World War II, relations resumed,
but with
caution owing to the tensions of the Cold War. Finland
could
undertake no initiatives in international relations that
might
cause the Soviet Union to suspect that Finland was being
drawn
into the Western camp.
The gradual relaxation of superpower tensions meant
that in
1955 Finland could join the Nordic Council, three years
after its
foundation. The Nordic Council was an organization
conceived to
further cooperation among Norway, Sweden, Denmark, and
Iceland.
Meeting once a year for a week in one of the capitals of
the
member countries, the council was an advisory body, the
decisions
of which were not binding; it did carry considerable
weight,
however, as the delegates at the annual meetings were
frequently
leading politicians of the countries they represented. At
the
insistence of Finland, security matters were not to be
discussed,
and attention was directed rather to economic, social, and
cultural issues. Unlike the European Community
(EC--see Glossary),
the Nordic Council was not a supranational
organization, and membership in the council did not affect
Finland's status as a neutral nation.
The Treaty of Helsinki of 1962 gave birth to the Nordic
Convention on Cooperation, which defined the achievements
and
goals of the regional policy of increased interaction.
This
agreement was followed by the formation in 1971 of the
Nordic
Council of Ministers, which instituted a formal structure
for
frequent meetings of the region's cabinet ministers. The
issue at
hand determined which ministers would attend. In addition
to
these larger bodies, numerous smaller entities existed to
further
Nordic cooperation. A study of the second half of the
1970s found
more than 100 such organizations. The efforts of these
bodies and
the many formal and informal meetings of Nordic
politicians and
civil servants stopped short of full integration, but they
yielded numerous agreements that brought Finland and the
other
Nordic countries closer together. This so-called "cobweb
integration" has given the citizens of Nordic Europe many
reciprocal rights in one another's countries. Finns were
able to
travel freely without passports throughout Nordic Europe,
live
and work there without restrictions, enjoy the full social
and
health benefits of each country, and since 1976, vote in
local
elections after a legal residence of two years.
Citizenship in
another of the Nordic countries could be acquired more
easily by
a Finn than by someone from outside the region.
Economic cooperation did not proceed so smoothly.
Nordic
hopes, in the mid-1950s, of establishing a common market
were
disappointed, and EFTA was accepted as a substitute. An
attempt
in 1969 to form a Nordic customs union, the Nordic
Economic Union
(NORDEK), foundered when Finland withdrew from the plan.
The
withdrawal may have been caused by Soviet concerns that
Finland
could be brought into too close a relationship with the
EEC via
Denmark's expected membership in the Community. This
setback was
mitigated, however, when the Nordic Investment Bank began
operations in 1976 in Helsinki. The bank's purpose was to
invest
in financial ventures in the Nordic region.
In the second half of the 1980s, Finland continued
working
with its Scandinavian neighbors, being a part, for
example, of
the Nordic bloc in the UN and participating in Nordic
Third World
development projects. Finland's Nordic NWFZ proposal was
being
studied and furthered by an inter-Nordic parliamentary
committee,
and Finland was always present at the semiannual meeting
of
Nordic foreign ministers.
Data as of December 1988
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