Foreign policy

All EU presidencies have to expect that the world will throw up some crises, but the Finns were particularly unlucky.

When the presidency began, Lebanon was in the throes of a war between Hizbullah and Israel. The EU’s member states, wary of the threat that Hizbullah posed to the secular government, were split between those who called for an immediate end to the Israeli bombing and those who were willing to give Israel more time to achieve its objectives. Foreign Minister Erkki Tuomioja’s desperate efforts to reach consensus were eventually saved by the Israeli army’s decision to end the campaign, after realising they were losing a public relations war.

Despite Helsinki’s desire to improve the EU’s relations with Russia, the Finnish presidency failed to find middle ground between those who favour an ideological approach and those who favour engagement. The Finnish decision to organise a meeting of EU leaders and Russian President Vladimir Putin was undoubtedly a diplomatic miscalculation. The EU came away from the meeting with little or nothing while Putin achieved a major diplomatic coup at a time when he was coming under pressure at home over the murder of dissident journalist Anna Politkovskaya.

All EU presidencies have to expect that the world will throw up some crises, but the Finns were particularly unlucky.