The theme of this year’s Kultaranta Talks is “The Future”. Tomorrow we will be pondering the future of Finland. But our opening panel deals with “The Future of European Security Institutions”. You are all warmly welcome. At the heart of European integration lies a paradox: The European project was born out of war and it was intended to ensure peace on the continent but it was meant to do so without an explicit mandate to discuss, let alone act on the topic…
Finland’s approach is very straightforward: We see a lot of untapped potential in EU defence co-operation. We view the EU as a security community that is built on solidarity and mutual dependence.
We want the EU to be ambitious but at the same time we believe that taking small and concrete steps is the best way forward. We want the future arrangements to be open and inclusive but not to the point of the lowest common denominator. And finally, we want to help the EU and NATO to work better together to ensure an inter-locking and not an inter-blocking system of security in Europe. Läs talet