IN ESSENCE the True Finns, real winners of Finland’s general election on Sunday, are perhaps best seen as a political expression of that economic mantra of the moment, “moral hazard”. A right-wing populist movement, the party has successfully tapped disquiet over the country’s stalling economy and the idea that the profligate EU, overfunded by Finns, is bailing out the undeserving and delinquent.
A reward, or so the argument goes, for Greek/Irish/Portuguese irresponsibility that will simply encourage more of the same. And anyway, it’s not our problem, party leader Timo Soini successfully argued.
As similar nationalist parties have done recently in Sweden, Denmark, Austria, the Netherlands, France, Italy, Belgium, and Hungary, the True Finns have also, although even more dramatically, become a lightning rod for popular alienation from politics and immigration – the party more than quadrupled its vote to 19 per cent, increasing its share of seats in parliament eightfold, and established itself as the country’s third party.
Both the conservative National Coalition Party (NCD) and the Social Democrats each saw their share of poll decline only by two percentage points, retaining a marginal lead over the True Finns. But the largely rural Centre Party, which led the outgoing government and had been tarnished by a party funding scandal, was the real loser, its vote declining by a full third to 16 per cent. The NCD, led by outgoing finance minister Jyrki Katainen who will become prime minister, will now try to forge a governing coalition with the Social Democrats, but which may have to include the True Finns. The process could take some time.
Whether the party is in government or not, Finland will – and has already – become a more difficult, less sympathetic member of the euro zone, and the unanimous approval of an €80 billion bailout package for Portugal next month is clearly going to remain problematic. The True Finns have shifted the agenda in Finland, with the Social Democrats also now expressing scepticism about bailouts, insisting that private investors and banks should shoulder more of the responsibility. Familiar ground!
Such concerns also chime with those of Chancellor Merkel’s coalition partners, the increasingly eurosceptic Free Democrats who have taken a hammering in recent elections. The party’s MPs now want the Bundestag to have a veto over all future bailouts, similar to the powers of Finland’s legislature. Some also want a planned permanent EU rescue fund to include a provision to expel countries from the euro zone.
The tensions that these debates expose reflect an uncomfortable reality at the heart of the euro project. While the Lisbon Treaty – whether Mr Soini likes it or not – insists that the economies of member states are “a matter of common concern”, that does not make for an easy reconciliation of interests in policy terms between those who see themselves as paymasters and the recipients of bailouts. The uphill road to economic union was never going to be easy. It just got harder.