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Finland: the Nordic Insider

Up until the decision on European Union (EU) membership in 1994 Finland had been very much on the edge of ‘Europe’ and had generally followed Sweden’s lead. However, since then things have changed. Finland has got on with the job of EU membership. The Maastricht plan for Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) by 1997 or 1999 was already agreed before the accession negotiations got under way and was treated as part of what was required. Although Finland only qualified on the exchange rate criterion on a generous interpretation of Exchange Rate Mechanism (ERM) membership, it was one of the three lowest inflation countries to which the others had to converge. That said, qualification was a relatively close call and it would have been easy to follow the Swedish example in avoiding the issue on a technicality had the government wished. However, like Sweden, Finland had also had an objective academic assessment of the merits of EMU membership (Pekkarinen et al., 1997). Indeed, its structure was closely modelled on the Swedish Calmfors (1997) Report which preceded it. The analysis and conclusions were similar, but the balance was just different enough to lead to the opposite decision. The key difference between the analysis of the problem facing Sweden and that facing Finland was ‘what would the alternative look like?’ The Finnish report assumed that as a small country the alternative would be close tracking of the euro through an equivalent of the ERM. In other words, they would need to follow the Danish example and acquire at least some of the credibility for price stability from the euro area. The Swedish report, on the other hand, assumed a free float and continuing inflation targeting along the lines of the UK. If this were just a matter of an academic assessment this distinction would be of little importance, as the results could readily be re-computed. However, it reflects a much more fundamental distinction between a small country and a larger one. Sweden is around twice the size of Finland in economic and population terms. While there is no obvious point at which the transition away from ‘smallness’ takes place (indeed it is dependent upon the structure of the economy), it is clear that the mindset is different in this instance — even though the practice is not really so different.