Translation

ADDRESS BY THE PRESIDENT OF THE REPUBLIC OF FINLAND
MR. MARTTI AHTISAARI TO THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT
IN STRASBOURG ON 17.6.1998

It is a great honour for me to address the European Parliament. In the decades that the work of building up the Union has been in progress, the Parliament has often indicated the way forward, presenting views that have provided a foundation and support for decisions, including difficult ones.

The Parliament has encouraged member states to develop the Union into not only an economic community, but also a political one. It has advocated a Union that is more democratic and open and displays greater solidarity. I remember with special warmth the Parliament’s broad support, just over four years ago, for the last enlargement and thereby also for Finnish accession.

Finland will assume the Presidency of the European Council in a year from now. Our term at the helm will be challenging. Several categories of issues that are important for the European Union will fall due for resolution in the course of next year.

Because of those decisions, as well as for other reasons, we consider it important that during our Presidency we shall be able to cooperate as closely as possible with the Parliament.


The history of our continent has contained stages in which the peoples of Europe have not determined their own destinies. In past centuries, attempts have been made to unite Europe through wars, coercion and by arranging dynastic marriages. The results have usually been devastating.

The political and economic integration set in train by the Treaty of Paris has fulfilled the hopes focused on it. The results of integration have bound the peoples and states of Europe to each other in a way that gives them the opportunity to build their own future together.

This time, the building of Europe has been founded on voluntariness, political will. Its success has always depended on the ability of political decision-makers to see beyond short-term national interests. Over the decades, we have repeatedly seen that determination and courage are demanded of political leaders most acutely when narrow parish-pump tendencies are at their strongest.


The Union has been built by the generations for whom European unification has been a question of war and peace. We must take care not to waste the inheritance they have given us. Their fresh-mindedness has served as the foundation for building a more stable and secure community in Europe. Peace can never be taken for granted.

We must remember that the generation that was born after the war and has lived its whole life in conditions of peace needs also other arguments in favour of the Union’s existence. Maintaining security and stability are still the primary goals of integration. In the present situation, however, the concept of security must be understood more broadly than in the past. More than traditional military security is involved. To an increasing degree, threats are associated with environmental hazards, uncontrolled migratory flows and international crime. These are problems that can not be combated with weapons; instead, the entire range of means that integration offers must be used.

Globalisation, strengthening the social dimension, developing the information society, to mention but a few examples of new phenomena, are creating new demands for the future of integration. A central task for the EU is to defend the European model of society, which is founded on social responsibility and solidarity.


When my predecessor paid a visit here five years ago, Finland was negotiating her membership of the European Union. The fall of the Berlin Wall had triggered a process of change that is still in progress. With it, the military and political division of Europe has receded. The last enlargement of the EU was connected with this change.

Change in our continent has been turbulent throughout the nineties. Over the next few years, the Union’s ability to manage this change will be evaluated especially against the yardstick of how successfully it carries through the next round of enlargement.

The accession of the Central and Eastern European countries to membership of the Union will be a multi-stage and demanding process. Preparation for membership will require major efforts on the part of the candidate countries. The Union will likewise have to develop its policies in various sub-fields and restructure its decision-making system to enable it to receive additional members.


The European Union and its working methods must be reformed. We cannot afford a Union that citizens regard as ineffectual, wasteful, remote and secretive. We must search our souls and ask whether what we are doing lives up to the expectations that are focused on us.

The European Union stands on a strong foundation, because our community is based on shared values. We believe it is possible to create a Union that is both efficient and democratic, competitive and social, politically united and recognises the diversity of values that its members represent.

What is essential is that we recognise the complexity of future challenges and face them together, on the Union level and in a way that takes the points of view of the different parties into consideration.


A debate concerning the course that the future development of the Union should follow is ongoing. One of the factors that have prompted it are the impending turn of the millennium. Now it is natural both to look back at what has been accomplished and also forward, assessing what we want to achieve from now on in.

Finland wants a strong Union, because it is a strong Union that will be best placed to promote its members’ interests and goals. Our prosperity is founded on stability in Europe and its adjacent regions as well as on extensive and effectively-functioning markets. Using the means that cooperation and integration make available, we shall strengthen not only stability in our continent, but also our own position. From our own perspective, the European Union is also a security community.

That is why we care about the EU’s ability to function effectively. Throughout the period of her membership, Finland has wished to work in a way that supports and enhances the efficiency of the Union’s decision-making processes.


The Treaty of Amsterdam will enshrine several positive new elements of importance to us in the documents on which the Union is founded. Among the benefits that it will bring are greater openness and an improved ability on the part of the Union to take care of employment and environmental questions. In some respects, however, the work remained uncompleted in Amsterdam; unfortunately, the Treaty does not in all respects correspond to the requirements that the Union is expected to meet with regard to its capacity for action. There is a need for an institutional reform that will meet three requirements.

First of all, the concentration in reform must be on matters that are essential from the perspective of the Union’s effectiveness. The best way to safeguard effectiveness is to increase the use of qualified-majority decision-making in matters that it is most purposeful to deal with on the European level. We have often noticed that the unanimity-based procedure can prevent necessary decisions being reached. Even more often, it has made the Union a ponderous actor and thereby damaged its credibility both as a unifying force for its member states and as a player on the international scene. No division between pillars must be allowed to prevent more effective decision-making.

Secondly, arrangements with a bearing on making the system of decision-making more effective must be sustainable. Institutional reforms should correspond to the Union’s needs irrespective of how many new members are admitted in the future and in how many waves.

Thirdly, the reforms must be decided on in good time before the next enlargement. For her part, Finland is prepared to carry the reform process forward as soon as the preconditions for beginning have been met. The historic EMU decisions have been made and monetary union will take effect at the beginning of next year. Now ratification of the Treaty of Amsterdam and deliberation of the Agenda 2000 proposals must be concluded. As things now stand, it seems that the time could be ripe to launch an institutional reform process towards the end of next year.


A Union that is both enlarging and deepening its integration is becoming the focus of growing expectations also on the international level. The EU has influence and bears responsibility beyond its own borders.

Especially in traditional trade talks, the Union’s negotiating power has been substantial. Yet its capability as an international actor has not in all respects been commensurate with its economic might.

For the Union to be able to protect its interests and make a constructive contribution to solving common problems, it must add efficiency to its actions in the area of external relations. This applies also to its external economic relations, in which the creation of a common currency area will further accentuate the need for a comprehensive changeover to communal procedures.

Another area in which more is being expected of the EU is the resolution of international crises. The aim of strengthening the EU’s capacity for action in the field of military crisis management was enshrined in the Treaty of Amsterdam. This corresponds to existing security needs in Europe and, from the perspective of the EU’s present development, is a realistic step in the evolution of a common defence policy. When the Treaty has entered into force, the Union would have to have the political will to intervene in crises, also militarily if necessary. In the area of crisis management, the EU would be capable of a more comprehensive range of actions than any anyone else, because it also has economic and political instruments at its disposal.


Only a Union that is effective and treats its external relations as a totality can function in a way that accords with the new, broadly-based concept of security.

Some of the new challenges of this kind that face the EU emanate from northern regions. For example, Finland’s eastern frontier, which is also the border between the EU and Russia, is one of the world’s deepest standard-of-living gulfs. Behind it and elsewhere in northern regions smoulder numerous problems that it lies equally strongly in the interests of all of us to solve. On the other hand, these regions have great potential on the European scale of things, and it can be effectively availed of only through cooperation between states.

For this the Union must create a northern dimension, with the aid of which it can coordinate and dovetail its actions in the North. In recent years the EU has successfully strengthened its southern dimension through the Barcelona process. By means of both the northern and the southern dimension stability and security will be effectively created in regions adjacent to the EU and the Union’s role as an international actor will be strengthened.


European integration was born of war, built on ruins and grew in a spirit of affinity. Its power is the right to choose in freedom and its strength is in shared values. In the political sense, the cementing force of integration lies in the European Union and its institutions, which guarantee continuity.

The transformation of Europe will continue. Political decision-making will have to adjust to the demands of this change. But adjustment alone will not be enough. The inheritance that we have received from past generations and our children’s future obligate us to do a lot more.

Half a century ago, the founders of the European Communities presented a vision of a new Europe. That vision has been largely fulfilled. Now Europe needs a vision for the new century and decision-makers who dare to trust the power of integration.