Foreign Ministry's press releases

Minister for Foreign Affairs Timo Soini will visit Washington DC on 1–4 February 2017.

The Ministry for Foreign Affairs has completed its internal investigation into the tax-free purchases made by the staff of the Finnish Embassy in Stockholm.

Estonia's new Minister of Foreign Affairs Sven Mikser will visit Finland and meet Foreign Minister Timo Soini in Helsinki on 31 January.

Finland continues to receive by far the most visa applications in Russia. In 2016, 84 per cent of visa applications to Finland were submitted in Russia. The proportion of the Schengen visa applications to Finland which were submitted in other countries amounted to 16 per cent. Last year Finland granted a total of 540,920 visas, and 464,899 out of these were granted in Russia.

Finland granted an additional EUR 14 million for humanitarian crisis areas across the world in late December 2016.

Finland and Ukraine signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) on cooperation in the energy sector during Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko’s visit to Finland on 24 January.

Foreign Minister Timo Soini will participate in the Suomi 100 tour of schools for Members of Parliament, organised by Parliament.

A Syria conference, hosted at the UN’s request by Finland, will be held in Helsinki on 24 January 2017. The conference will present the UN’s humanitarian priorities for Syria in 2017 and launch the Regional Refugee and Resilience Plan (3RP) for 2017–2018, which extends to Syria’s neighbouring countries.

This year’s edition of This is FINLAND presents our cool and hot country, with topics ranging from Finnish arctic know-how to the realm of space technology.

The Ministry for Foreign Affairs has granted a total of 911,000 euros in discretionary government transfers to 10 organisations working in the field of foreign and security policy.