I don't understand the Finns. Why face up to reality, take responsibility
for themselves and work out a sustainable way forward? That's no fun. Why not
just falsify the accounts and then borrow lots of money from other people with
no intention of ever paying it back? As we can see, the latter approach is
working well for Greece...Finland is in trouble, and in the words of the central
bank this week, the situation is "grave". While France has
often been branded Europe's "sick man" and Greece's problems are well known,
Finland's economy is still 5pc smaller than before the financial crisis. The
country will barely crawl out of a three-year recession this year, while
unemployment is forecast by the OECD to grow in 2015.
Faced with a bloated state, below-par growth, and prices and costs that have
risen at a much faster pace than the rest of the eurozone, the medicine is a
familiar one. "The key to resolving the serious problems in the economy lies in
structural reforms, fiscal consolidation and improved cost competitiveness," the
Bank of Finland's latest health check of the economy said last week.
The phrase could have been taken from Greece's own long austerity prescription, but with an
ageing population, state spending approaching 60pc of gross domestic product
(GDP) and tax revenues far short of this, something has to change, and quickly.
Finland, which has become known as one of the eurozone's lead preachers of
fiscal prudence, will embark on a €10bn (£7.2bn) round of belt
tightening over five years. Well, Finland and Estonia are economically (and
culturally) closely wed, Greece and Cyprus like. Finland and Russia. Well
Finland is the only EU member nation to border Russia and not be a NATO member.
I suspect they are wary of Russia but have a greater understanding of Russia's
somewhat justified paranoia and anger with broken ' influence space' NATO
invasions since the 1990's. They seek the old USSR relationship probably which
worked well for Finland. Your last sentence captures this. BTW by many polls
the most pro-EU Nordic - not members yet (and they were in the list with
Denmark, UK and Ireland in the 1960's - is Norway.
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