EMU enthusiasts lead first Finnish Euro polls

Date: 17/10/1996

By Emily von Sydow

THREE conservatives - all great single currency enthusiasts - are leading the Finnish Euro polls in the week before the country votes for the first time for its 16 members of the European Parliament.

First among them is an energetic young woman, Kirsi Piha, who has never tried to hide her federalist inclinations. She wants to rejuvenate the European Parliament and redistribute funds from rural areas to the cities where, she argues, the money is needed more.

Second is Marjo Matikainen, a cross-country queen of the Eighties, followed by the former mayor of Helsinki, Raimo Ilaskivi, who is also unreservedly pro-EMU and in favour of further European integration.

But with just days to go before the country goes to the polls on Sunday (20 October), a large number of voters are still undecided.

European issues are regarded by many in Finland as obscure and complicated, although the municipal elections being held on the same day are expected to attract a slightly bigger crowd. Issues such as the proposed rod-and-line fishing rights along Finland's coastline are more easily digested than institutional reforms in the EU.

The Euro debate in Finland in the run-up to this weekend's vote has been, to a large extent, a re-run of the battle in the referendum on membership, much to the fury of Finnish Prime Minister Paavo Lipponen.

He has warned voters that Finland cannot remain with one foot outside and one inside the EU forever, and insists that the country should start acting as a full-time member of the Union, and pushing for the necessary reforms to achieve its long-term goal of enlargement.

For Finland, that of course means including Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania in the first group of new EU member countries.

Enlargement is the one issue which unites all the candidates battling for seats in the European Parliament.

The same, however, cannot be said about the single currency.

When Lipponen launched his attack on his country's continued ambivalence towards the EU, he was almost certainly motivated - at least in part - by the need to prepare the ground for the Finnish markka's entry into the Exchange Rate Mechanism, which occurred just days after the prime minister's keynote speech following a weekend meeting of the EU's monetary committee in Brussels.

For one of the country's most vociferous critics of EMU is Esko Seppänen, a candidate for the leftist alliance which forms part of the government coalition. He voted against membership of the ERM as a member of the central bank assembly, and his popularity is likely to continue to cause headaches for Lipponen's administration.