They’re not well off matey but they were the only country to pay off WW2 debts in full.

If the Finns are not well off, who is?

how easily they forget. Although the finish premier was a strong supporter of Ireland not being forced to bail out its banks IIRC.

Funnily enough, that is a language I’ve been learning the past 6 months.

So you want the Fiins to pay your debts?

?They’re not his debts, or mine, or yours for that matter.

Kenneth,

I think quite a lot of various countries debts have been federalized already. There simply is a limit somewhere when this whole plan doesn’t work anymore and we are getting closer to that limit. Finland will never agree on EU as a Debt Union. And don’t say Finland just wants to have the raisins of the cake, we are more than happy to leave if you want to.

The EU is a debt union. The current position is that states owe money to financial institutions in other states and outside the union. The idea of soveirgnty and independence was eroded by globalisation. I think Finland and Germany should think hard before they make any moves as their actions could precipitate events that will ultimately cost them a lot more than the euro.

I think Finland is on the ball!!

Well said Kenneth, it seems like some of our Euro “partners” want all the gains and none of the pain.

We don’t want to assume responsibility for the banking crisis, and neither do the Finns. Hard to blame them, as we’d be doing the same in their position.

Cost of prosperity? Don’t make me laugh! The banks have successfully dumped their debt onto the backs of many people of Europe and now those people are bitching when a country finally says they won’t be part of the ponzi. People should have kicked off when Lenihan and Co put the guarantee in place instead.

Some of these strong countries could do with a history lesson concerning their own economic affairs. Both Finland (1990’s economic crisis) and Germany (biggest debt Transgressor of 20th century) needed alot of help from external funds in the past to help them get over their debt and now they want to bail when the shoe is on the other foot. I think both of these countries need to given a wake up call

IMO you cant blame the Fins for not wanting to share the burden, why should they, particularly given the still uncertain future of the Euro as a currency and topped up by the fact that the ESM treaty has still not been passed by the Bundestag. There is a constitutional challenge to the Fiscal and ESM treaties going through the German courts at the moment. The German people see these treaties for what the really are – a watering down of their countires sovereignty and are not happy about handing over fiscal control to unelected financiers and beaurocrats..
“Germany’s president Joachim Gauck has agreed not to sign the legislation before the constitutional court rules. The ESM cannot take effect without Germany’s approval. Should the constitutional challenge be upheld, the Euro/eurozone is not stable”.

http://www.breakingnews.ie/world/german-court-could-block-euro-pact-557611.html.

I have to say that I am quite surprised that this challenge hasnt been reported by the Journal :-/. But it is great to see that there is at least one of the eurozone governments who have made plans to cover for every eventuality, unlike our crowd of clowns who are incapable of coming up with plan A never mind B.

Aidan, I think your information needs updating. Finland never got any help from any external fund for 1990’s crisis. In fact that’s one of the reasons Finnish economy is now in relatively decent shape, afterall we let most of the biggest banks go bankrupt, establishes so called “trash banks” collecting all the bad debt and sold them after getting them cleaned. I think you need also more learnings from the history: Finland is the only country in the world who has always paid all it’s debts including the WWII for Sovjet Union.

I can’t tell about the German past but you were simply wrong with your Finnish assumptions.

But the point is really that this whole arrangement of handling the crisis is simply doomed to fail. Does it make sense to participate when you’re sure to lose your money? It’s not a question of solidarity between the nations, it’s merely to save some German and French banks. Is it really justified to ask other countries taxpayers to fund them agianst no collaterals, no ownership, just for fun?

Ireland thinks so Kimmo, weren’t we happy to pay for the banks under those terms?

Paul,

Irish people are suffering because you chose to be the good guy.

Look what happened in Iceland. Their complete banking sector went down, and I mean every bank. They chose another path. Initial whining from Europe and UK, but look at them now. It only took a couple of years and they are back. They can already get financed from the market, they don’t need collective arrangements for that.

And another thing, this whole crap has nothing to do with EURO. Euro is only used to tie up the payers for the biggest Ponzi scam in history where wealth is transferred from Eurozone taxpayers everywhere towards a handful of major global banks in France, Germany and USA (some also to Japan).

Paul, I believe (hope) you’re being sarcastic there.

Lol, of course I was being sarcastic, we need a sarcasm font on here :-D. At this stage I firmly believe all is lost unless some sensible people stand up to the madness!! Go Finland!!

What did the Fins ever do for us?

They needed help and they paid the debts and did what they had to do, do you think Greece and Spain will ever pay their debts back.
There is a fundamental difference between the thinking of south and West, tax evasion and corruption is systematic and also part of the political system in south.

There would be no tariffs for trading with the EU if Greece were to fall out of membership as they would be a part of the EFTA as are countries like Switzerland and Norway.

You have a point, but it is dependant on them meeting EFTA membership requirements. If Finland did decide to leave the EU, they would not emerge economically unscathed. This could prevent or delay their membership approval.

Norway is in the EEA – they are obliged to pay almost the same amount into the EU as a full member and must transpose roughly 80% of the Unions laws in order to trade with the EU and have access to the single market yet they have no voice whatsoever at the EU council or other decision making bodies. If finland wants this future along with the UK then fair enough.

There are rather a lot of examples of federalisation working, Germany being the rather obvious example. While each EU country obviously chose to join, that’s not true of the USA, which purchased large parts of itself from France and Russia, as well as annexing a few bits like Hawaii.

If the uk go this way we will probably have to follow suit. They are our largest trading partner. A lot of our exports go to the uk. As well as our physical exports to the continent would have to transit the uk .

Finland was a member of EFTA before they joined EU, I don’t see any problems there. I don’t see why they would have to leave EU itself, similar to Sweden, Denmark and UK which i think is the mother of all freeriders.

Also the bailout of most of these countries is a result of greed, some got rich and left the debts to others.

These bailout would not even happen without France and Germany being deeply involved in the crisis, they will loose the most if the bailout doesn’t materialise.

Bingo bus,

Olli Rehn’s job dictates his thoughts and his pure goal is to create a strong federal Europe with central power in Brussels.

Finland actually never defaulted though. In the 90′s Finland saw yields on the level of 15% for it’s bonds and it was naturally impossible to finance anything with external funding. What Finland though did, was that it gave collaterals for specific loans which therefore received AAA status. Like state funded low cost apartment projects where the future rental revenues where given as collaterals. There are multiple similar examples and it worked well. Naturally there were lots of mistakes as well but the point is that one needs to bring ones innovativity on the table and most problems can be handled without outside help.

lol – Funny cause it’s true..sadly

Yep, he’s never had a Nokia so . . .

My pleasure Saffron!

What’s the myth about the bondholders as gamblers. All investors and lenders are risk takers. If that makes them gamblers, so be it. But we need investors. As it turns out they made very safe investments when they bought the bonds. They were paid with interest on most cases.
Everyone who bought property in the period 2000 to 2008 took a risk even though they did not realise how dicey their decisions were in most cases. These were the accidental gamblers and I hope there is help for many of them.

Finland leaving the Euro will cause so much negative speculation that a EU-wide recession will be an inevitability. Even if this is done in a structured manner, there’s no way any country will escape unharmed from it. An EU-wide recession will lead to huge drop in global demand, and I can’t see how this would be good for Finland in the slightest.

Maybe. If Germany, Holland, Finland etc leave the euro, the remaining countries will be able to devalue their currency.

The problem is that Germany will then have to restructure its banking system. I think the cost would be 1 trillion euros, similar to the cost of bailing out the South but more politically acceptable. If that happens, then Ireland should leave as well.

The cost of solving the financial crisis is rising by the day. If Merkel and co don’t get their act together soon then we are all screwed. There’s no easy solutions here – except maybe for Finland.

Look at Swizerland and Norway, they manage to stay out of the EU and gain a lot by staying outside. Here are the figures concerning Sweden’s net contribution to the European Union the last 5-6 years:

2007: Net contribution 13.6 billion kronor
2008: Net contribution 20.5 billion kronor
2009: Net contribution 7.3 billion kronor.
2010: Net contribution 17.5 billion kronor.
2011: Net contribution 18.3 billion kronor
2012: Forecasted net contribution 18.3 billion kronor

source:http://www.eu-upplysningen.se/Sverige-i-EU/Sveriges-EU-avgift/ (in swedish)

We are not against other European states, we hope that Greece get their fiscal system in order. But being supposed to play the role as a constant net contributer make the idea concerning the EU more and more unattractive. The problem is that there are regions within Sweden, sparsely populated with an ageing population that are in much morally higher need of the Swedish tax payers money compared to Spain and Greece.

So, more and more people in Sweden ask themselves the meaning of being members in the EU. Eternal net payers to avoid an EU-wide recession?! Maybe You are right in your concerns. However, I believe that a Swedish referendum concerning EU-exit would result in Sweden leaving the EU.

Sweden can leave the EU without any devastating repercussions (so long as it negotiates an economic partnership), as it’s not part of the Euro. This is not the same as Finland leaving the Euro.

Changing a currency is not a walk in the park at the best of times. Leaving a currency union is a recipe for short term chaos and long term misery, especially in the current climate.

Fiachra,

I don’t think any country would be leaving Euro zone with light considerations. I also think that Finland will investigate properly all the alternatives and it very well might turn out it’s too costly to leave.

But the alternative is seems to be very bad. After French election the power inside EU seems to have shifted to axel Italy, Spain and France. This trio in power will quarantee failure of the EZ having the agenda of taking every eurocent out of North as long as they can. Finland didn’t get their opinion even on paper at the last summit, so where is democracy?

Just like Sweden, Finland has always additionally contributed every year regardless of thess additional requirements now appearing to socialize the debts and save some French and German banks.

Europe is heading for socialism where the mindless transfer of wealth towards the weakest economies are ruining the competitiveness of even the best nations. This in today’s world with blocks of USA (NAFTA) and soon to be started RUSSIA/CHINA with natural resources from Russia and low cost production in China (which in addition invests heavily on research) seems to leave the donkey card for Europe with it’s ridiculous culture of Unions especially in the South.

I sure don’t want to let Spain, Italy and France to dictate my future in today’s world, do you?

The sensible countries should be leading EU but as they seem to be minority, we should consider carefully what to do, it’s just common sense.

How, exactly were the Finns supposed to benefit?

I moved to Scandinavia, so far so good. Highly recommend it.

“Germany and Finland historically have not had corrupt parties that have had any chance of running the government” Paul, how corrupt would you say the Nazi party were on a scale of say 1 to 10 oh and don’t forget their erstwhile allies the Finns!

We certainly shouldn’t make any excuses for our corrupt governments, saying that I wouldn’t be comparing them to the past governments of Germany….

That said I do agree with you on the Fianna FAILer’s, a more corrupt cabal of gombeens you wouldn’t find this side of Zimbabwe! Sadly it’s not just the FF’ers, FG, Labour, SF and most of the so called ‘independents’ are just as bad, once they get their greedy snouts in the trough they just can’t help themselves.

Good grief, Ed! I meant post war (West) Germany. The far right have been unable to enter the German parliament since 1945 unlike the parliaments of many other European countries.

I find it hilarious

I find hilarious the second criticism offered by Irish Eurosceptics against Finnish and German opposition to bailing out financially profligate and irresponsible countries such as Greece and the Republic of Ireland (when they’re not using the first phoney argument I mentioned above) that the Germans were Nazis and the Finns were Nazi collaborators.

Soviet Union attacked Finland in the beginning of WW2 and fought alone without help of anybody. I cannot really blame them.

We borrow and you pay and you call that solidarity. Wow.

Bigger picture Mark – the EU is about ever closer union between sovereign states to share our collective wealth etc for the common prosperity of all our citizens. What country knows when it might need its EU neighbours for support? Finland is pissed because when the Soviet Union collapsed their economy collapsed and because there was no euro then they didn’t the same attention Spain et al are getting now from the rest of the EU but especially Germany. Also, it’s not about Finland paying for anyone’s debts. They ESM deal is about sharing the collective risk amongst all the members. Ireland still has to repay what we owe.

You borrow from us and we take the hit! Yea Mark that sounds like solidarity doesn’t it! We have given away countless supplies of fishery reserves off our coast. As far as I am concerned we give and take like any other state in the EU.

What back to hatin de Brits & kissin the churches hole????

No thanks

What interest rate would you set for the Irish currency? What inflation rate would you anticipate within 12 months?

What continent do you live in Boromir?

he must be english

He is from the Shire!!

Boromir SonOfGonDoR is not English he is your common or garden Leprechaun. A peculiar mixture of country bumpkin and soccer oaf strokin his anatomy while reading the Beano.

I’m from gondor.