Finland In The European Union

With a focus on governmental institutions, this book explores the ways in which EU membership has altered the balance of power among key political actors. The authors discuss cultural adaptation to integration, as well as examining the views of the elite and voters. The transformation in national identity, sovereignty and neutrality are also examined.

Jakobson tells the story of a small nation that has emerged a winner from the ordeals of the twentieth century. Finland is still widely remembered for its successful resistance against Soviet attempts to subjugate it during World War II, but less is known about the skillful balancing act by which Finns preserved their independence and way of life during the Cold War. Finland is in fact one of the few European nations that can claim an unbroken record of democratic rule ever since the beginning of the 20th century. By joining the European Union, Finland has now finally moved out of Moscow's shadow and, thanks to investment in education and technological development, has joined the dozen most prosperous nations in the world. The Finnish experience casts new light on the central issues facing Europe today—for example, the contradiction between the continuing vitality of nationalism and the pressures of integration, as well as the challenge of how to relate to Russia, still an unknown factor in the European security equation. This is a major work for all scholars and researchers of Scandinavian and European Studies.

First published in 1998, this volume asked the question, what is Europe?. What is Finland’s position in Europe?. The author tries to give an answer to these questions by defining first Europe in terms of its key political traditions and then locating Finland into this map of historical ideas. The ultimate purpose of this analysis of historical ideas is very pragmatic as it tries to find an answer to the core problems of European unification. Why are different European countries at differing levels of readiness as far as the project of unification is concerned?. The answer can be found again in political traditions.

Seminar paper from the year 2006 in the subject Politics - International Politics - Topic: European Union, grade: 1,0, University of Münster (Political Science), course: European Economic Policies, 19 entries in the bibliography, language: English, abstract: Throughout the course of the 1990s, Finland underwent a tremendous economic transformation unrivaled by any other European or OECD country in the post-World War II era. In less than a decade Finland went from being perhaps one of the least knowledge-based economies to becoming the sole most embraced one, subsequently heralding it to be a model example of not only Europe’s but the world’s ‘new economy’. During the twentieth-first century, Finland has three times to date ranked number one in the World’s Economic Forum’s (WEF) Competitiveness Index, alongside achieving an astonishing close second to Sweden in the World Bank’s Knowledge Economic Index (KEI). On these grounds, Finland’s recent development towards a knowledge-based economy has indeed captured the international spotlight, and justly the attention of economic policy-makers across the world. To this day in age, knowledge has irrefutably become the driving force behind economic growth and social development, with exogenous factors particularly that of globalization playing enormous roles in the acceleration of the diffusion and the application of knowledge. Perhaps, not better put then in the trivial words of Bill Clinton “in today’s knowledge-based economy, what you earn depends on what you learn,”5such words do certainly substantiate the importance of knowledge and innovation in today’s ‘new economy’. Thus is seems, successful economies and societies will be those who can adapt to the rapid demands of globalization, where the need of countries to be more flexible, creative, innovative, and welcoming to the winds of change, have been more critical than it has ever been before. Advancement in information and communication technologies (ICTs) has often been seen as one method of achieving a more knowledge-based economy, as development in ICTs seem to provide new opportunities in product specialization, improved productivity, and sustainable growth.

The team of authors, including academics from all five main Nordic countries, provides an authoritative assessment of the intricate relationship between the EU and the Nordic countries.