Renew Europe Official Mission to Finland

I took part in an official mission to Finland alongside my colleagues from the Renew Europe Bureau, where I was honoured to spend nearly an hour discussing today’s most pressing global issues with the President of Finland, Alexander Stubb: the wars in Ukraine and Iran, EU-US relations, EU enlargement, and the new global geopolitical dynamics.

We began the visit with a working meeting alongside our Finnish colleagues from the liberal political family: Antti Kaikkonen, President of Keskusta, and Anders Adlercreutz, President of the Swedish People’s Party of Finland (RKP) and Finland’s Minister of Education.

We held discussions with experts from the European Centre of Excellence for Countering Hybrid Threats (Hybrid CoE) about the increasing complexity of hybrid warfare confronting European democracies and its impact on citizens and governments alike.

We visited Helsinki’s largest underground shelter together with Mayor Daniel Sazonov, an astonishing example of civil resilience. Finland has built a comprehensive total defence system involving society as a whole, with the capacity to shelter more than 85% of the population in the event of a crisis.

In Saariselkä, we met with representatives of the Sámi people the European Union’s only indigenous people to discuss the preservation of their traditions and the specific challenges in the Arctic region, including reindeer herding.