What would happen to Finland if Donald Trump becomes US president? Iltalehti sets out to answer the question this morning with the help of a trade expert and a foreign policy researcher, whose conclusions do not make reassuring reading. The security situation in the Baltic region would become immediately uncertain, predicts Charlie Salonius-Pasternak from the Finnish Institute of International Affairs (UPI), given Trump’s recent assertion that his administration would no longer necessarily send troops to defend the Baltic countries should Russia threaten them.
The paper says that, given the question marks over Britain and Turkey’s future role in NATO due to the Brexit vote and this month’s coup attempt, NATO countries under a Trump presidency would have to accept that they can’t fully count on the alliance’s help.
Meanwhile Russia could easily turn the instability in the region to its advantage, Salonius-Pasternak warns. “When Trump has said that the US might not help, [Russia] can do what it likes. The uncertainty is so great that many things would be possible.”
The prospects for Finland’s exports don’t look much brighter, adds fellow UPI expert Mika Aaltola, given that Trump has been fiercely critical of the US’s current trade agreements, preferring instead to renegotiate bilateral deals with individual states, which would be easier to change.
“It would be tough for a small country to independently negotiate a trade agreement with the US,” Aaltola predicts. “The US market may become closed to Finnish high-tech exports, which is a significant black cloud on the horizon.”
But wouldn’t many of Trump’s more extreme election promises fail to materialise, if he becomes faced with the realities of holding office? “That is possible,” grants Salonius-Pasternak. “But if Trump becomes president, those things he’s said can’t just be taken back.”
MPs' to-do list this autumn
Tampere’s Aamulehti takes a look at the challenges facing Finland’s politicians as they return from their summer holidays. “Parliament was churning out decisions at break-neck speed in June,” the paper said, leaving many expecting that autumn will be quieter. But it won’t be, Aamulehti says. The paper goes on to look into the big questions that MPs will have to tackle during the autumn, and notes there are many familiar themes on the list.
These include jobs – how to get those 330,000 unemployed people into work? Last spring’s hard-fought competitiveness agreement may help, at least according to some of the parties, the paper says. Key to this issue is the problem of matching up jobseekers to the country’s 90,000 plus vacant posts.
Then there’s the task of bringing a key aspect of the health and social care reforms into law – working out how patient choice will work under the 15 newly created regional healthcare authorities, using public and private funding. Whereas the issue once threatened to bring down the government, that’s unlikely to happen now, the paper reckons, saying: “The cards are on the table, they just need to be put into the right order.”
There will need to be some rewriting of the country’s foreign and security outlook following the Brexit vote and the Nice terror attack, the paper says. And although migration has slowed from last year’s levels, MPs will have to grapple this autumn with how to reform the EU Dublin accord. Plus there’s the issue of increases to childcare costs, which was left unaddressed last spring, and the question of where to find the money to help the country’s struggling farmers. There’s a lot to discuss regarding transport, too, including the politically divisive question of whether or not to liberalise taxi permits. “But if the government managed not to fall during the mess of the healthcare reforms, it should stay intact over taxis,” the paper thinks.
Men still on top
Helsingin Sanomat has done a study of the 127 companies listed on the Helsinki Stock Exchange, and found that one in ten has a board made up of men only. But if that sounds like a lot, the situation has come on enormously in recent years, the paper says – it did the same study six years ago, when one in four companies had no women at the highest level, and in 2008, when half of all listed companies’ boards were men-only.
Despite the growth, though, there is still not one company where women board members are in the majority, Hesari says. And although the number of female board chairs has doubled since 2010, the number is still tiny – just eight companies currently have a woman as head of the board. Of the 125 listed companies with a permanent CEO, just five of them are women. These include 34-year-old Tiina Alahuhta-Kasko, at the helm of fashion house Marimekko, and Padma Ravichander, who has spent over three decades as a manager in the software industry in India and North America, and was recently appointed CEO of Finnish telecoms firm Tecnotree.
As for the companies with a dearth of women at the top, many tell the paper that they simply haven’t found women candidates for board positions – in some cases because eligibility depends on previous experience as a board member.
