Editorials and columns

All Aboard!

By Olavi Louko
The writer is Deputy Mayor of the City of Espoo

The Agenda Espoo is recognised as a prosperous, dynamic city with world-class ICT muscle. Celebrating her 555th birthday this year, Espoo is also home to ”innovation university” Aalto. The coming metro connection will take Espoo to the next level. Espoo is the second biggest city in Fin¬land, with 255,000 inha...
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Helsinki Is Growing Inwards

By Hannu Penttilä
Deputy Mayor for City Planning and Real Estate of the City of Helsinki

The Agenda This year, Helsinki celebrates her 200 years as the capital of Finland and is proudly carrying the title of World Design Capital 2012. Cities’ development is no longer guaranteed by administrative decisions but their success is dictated by their ability to attract people of this millennium. Helsinki meets...
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The Mad Hatters

By Paavo Lipponen
The writer is former Prime Minister and Speaker of Parliament of Finland.

One of the biggest casualties of the earthquake and tsunami in Fukushima is common sense. There is no limit to the hysteria the nuclear accident has caused in the Western world, particularly in Germany. False information, political manipulation and hasty conclusions seem to be the order of the day. The nuclear acciden...
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The Rise and Fall of the G20

By Risto E. J. Penttilä
CEO, Central Chamber of Commerce of Finland

G20 Finance ministers met in Paris in February. They did not accomplish much. This was not surprising. The G20 is no longer a steering group for the world economy. It has become a debating chamber for two camps with competing economic ideologies. One camp consists of the BRIC-plus countries (Brazil, Russia, India, Chi...
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Decision Time for Europe

By Paavo Lipponen
The writer is former Prime Minister and Speaker of Parliament of Finland.

It was a refreshing experience to observe world events from Asia during a twoweek vacation in Thailand. This Asian Tiger is booming, while trying to keep internal pressures under the lid. India is rising and catching up with China. Although Japan is stagnant, Asia is the engine of world economy. China is spreading it...
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Nordic Model is So Last Century!

By Risto E. J. Penttilä
CEO, Central Chamber of Commerce of Finland

The Nordic Model was the talk of the town ten years ago. Now everyone wants to copy Singapore. What happened? Why did Singapore overtake Finland and the other Nordic states? And, most importantly, is there still life left in the Nordic Model? Who is the most influential person in the world? This is the question that I ...
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If You Do Not Export Electricity, You Will Import It

By Paavo Lipponen
The writer is former Prime Minister and Speaker of Parliament of Finland.

As I predicted (NORDICUM December 2009), the Copenhagen Summit turned out to be a total catastrophe for the European Union. The EU was not even at the table, when the Copenhagen Accord was negotiated. Can there be a clearer sign as to who are running the world? It was a rude awakening. It is time to reassess both EU c...
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Pipedreams and Nightmares

By Risto E. J. Penttilä
Director of the Finnish Business and Policy Forum EVA

Gerhard Schröder and Vladimir Putin must be pleased. The construction of the Nord Stream, a gas pipeline the two leaders concocted in the 1990s, is about to commence. Hundreds of kilometres of gas pipes are waiting to be laid on the bottom of the North Sea. The governments of Russia, Germany, Poland, Finland and S...
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EU catastrophy in Copenhagen?

By Paavo Lipponen
The writer is former Prime Minister and Speaker of Parliament of Finland

It is, by now, clear that no binding international agreement will emerge from the Copenhagen Climate Summit. From the beginning, expectations about so-called ambitious results were unrealistic. The United States was not going to change its approach 180 degrees from Kyoto, and the developing countries could not be expec...
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NATO Goes North

By Risto E. J. Penttilä
Director of the Finnish Business and Policy Forum EVA

The word North regained some of its lost political significance when Denmark’s Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen recently became the head of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation aka NATO. This is likely to be followed by the membership of Finland and Sweden in the alliance. Sounds preposterous? It is not. Plent...
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Time for decisions

By Paavo Lipponen
The writer is former Prime Minister and Speaker of Parliament of Finland.

The global economic crisis is being tackled with concerted action by all the major players. The G20 meeting in London on 3 March 2009 gave an extra boost to our confidence about recovery in the near future. Concrete action must follow: all governments should stimulate their economies more, regulatory reform cannot wait...
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It’s the End of the World as We Know It

By Risto E. J. Penttilä
Director of the Finnish Business and Policy Forum EVA

An American rock band called R.E.M. had a big hit in the late 1980s. I remember the song very well because I was finishing my doctoral dissertation in the UK at the time. The song was called ‘It’s the End of the World as We Know It’. The lyrics seemed to describe what would happen if I did not finish ...
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We are all in it together

By Paavo Lipponen
The writer is former Prime Minister and Speaker of Parliament of Finland

In November 1977, in a speech to the Finnish-American Chamber of Commerce in New York City, I quoted J.K. Galbraith’s two principles for understanding the American economy: Rule Number One: “Under all circumstances you should mistrust and hence ignore all official economic forecasts.” Rule Number ...
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Convergence of Economic Systems – Take Two

By Risto E. J. Penttilä
Director of the Finnish Business and Policy Forum EVA

During the Cold War era, there was plenty of talk about convergence between socialism and capitalism. In the aftermath of Senator Barack Obama’s tour of Europe, there is talk about convergence between US capitalism and European market economy. This convergence may well prove to be more real than the previous one....
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EU second thoughts on climate and energy policy

By Paavo Lipponen
The writer is former Prime Minister and Speaker of Parliament of Finland

In spite of systematic campaign against its legitimacy, nuclear energy is coming back as an important element in European climate change policy. The statement of Energy Commissioner Andres Pielbags at the Foratom Conference in April made it clear: “Nuclear energy makes an important contribution to our fight again...
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State Capitalism in Finland

By Risto E. J. Penttilä
Director of the Finnish Business and Policy Forum EVA

Big lay-offs are always bad news. The news is even worse if the closed plant is the biggest employer in a remote corner of a country. The news becomes inflammable if the company behind the lay-offs is partially owned by the state. Stora Enso, one of the world’s leading forestry companies, ignited a storm of pro...
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Soft Power against Gas Power

By Lasse Lehtinen
The writer is a Member of the European Parliament

“Gazprom has got a lot further than the Red Army ever did,” whispers one of the international wiseacres. “The USSR,” opines another senior member of the commentariat, “was a lot easier to deal with than Russia is today”. It’s true that Russia was much more predictable in the ...
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