Everything to play for in Finnish Euro-poll

Date: 19/09/1996

By Emily von Sydow

OLD party loyalties will be ignored next month when the Finns vote in their first European parliamentary elections, according to the polls.

This is likely to mean plenty of fresh faces when the newly-elected MEPs take their seats after the 20 October elections, since the present members were appointed by the Finnish parliament when the country joined the Union in January 1995.

By holding the Euro-election at the same time as local elections, the authorities hope to minimise the risk of a low turnout, as happened when Sweden went to the Euro-polls for the first time last year.

The Finnish authorities and the Helsinki offices of the Parliament and the Commission are ambitiously aiming for a 65&percent; turnout, and campaigns aimed at demonstrating the importance and powers of the European Parliament have been launched to help achieve this goal.

Despite heated debates on the pros and cons of Union membership, the Finnish situation has little in common with the Swedish or Austrian traumas: most Finns still think membership is a good thing.

The Finns will, nevertheless, have ample opportunities to vote for anti-EU candidates: almost half of the 200 standing for the 16 seats available, spread between 15 parties, have expressed such sentiments.

The centre party candidates, speaking for many of Finland's farmers, are campaigning on a negative platform because Union membership has cost the agricultural sector millions of ecu worth of state support.

Olli Rehn, the lonely pro-EU centre party candidate and currently an MEP within the European Liberal Democratic and Reformist Party group (ELDR), faces a tough battle for re-election.

His main opponent is Paavo Väyrynen, a fiercely anti-EU centre party MEP, former foreign minister and long-time political manipulator who is currently topping all the opinion polls. Behind him comes Jörn Donner, the chain-smoking cultural enfant terrible of the Swedish-speaking minority, who is the social democrats' crowd-puller.

The human rights representative in Bosnia, Elisabeth Rehn, ELDR, who coyly said she would run again if the leadership of the Swedish People's Party begged her to, is not standing. Her main argument for remaining an MEP - that she needed the services provided in the Parliament for her difficult task in the Balkans - obviously failed to convince the party leadership.

In the opinion polls, the five leading stars represent a panoply of political diversity. Väyrynen and Donner are followed by two aspiring female members of the European People's Party (EPP), Kirsi Piha and Marjo Mattikainen, with Esko Seppänen of the left alliance behind them.

As the race enters the final furlong, the heat is on - so far, only one-third of voters have decided which candidate to support.