Foreign Ministry's press releases

A mother together with her children aged under 10 have returned to Finland from Turkey. The family was previously interned in the al-Hol camp in Syria.

A free trade agreement between the European Union and Vietnam will enter into force on 1 August 2020. The agreement will open doors to a growing market of over 95 million consumers. “The agreement offers new opportunities for Finnish companies in Vietnam,” says Minister Skinnari.

Minister for Foreign Affairs Pekka Haavisto visited Iraq on 22–23 July at the invitation of Iraq’s Minister of Foreign Affairs Fuad Hussein. The central purpose of the visit was to establish relations with Iraq’s new Government, to express support for Iraq’s stabilisation efforts, and to exchange views on topical bilateral and regional questions. Iraq is located in Europe’s neighbouring region and is an important country geopolitically. Its stability and the start of reconstruction are strongly in the interest of Finland and the whole European Union.

Minister for Foreign Affairs Pekka Haavisto is visiting Iraq. During the visit, Foreign Minister Haavisto will have meetings with the country’s leadership and officially open the Finnish Embassy in Baghdad, which was reopened in autumn 2019. He will also meet the Finnish Crisis Management Force in Iraq.

Ministry for Foreign Affairs has granted project funding under HEI ICI programme for 2020–2024. Over the next four years, the programme will support cooperation projects between higher education institutions in Finland and developing countries by EUR 11.2 million.

On 13 July, foreign ministers of the Member States of the European Union will convene for a Foreign Affairs Council meeting in Brussels. Finland’s representative at the meeting will be Minister for Foreign Affairs Pekka Haavisto. The main issues on the agenda will be the situation in Latin America and the Caribbean and the EU-Turkey relations. Other topical matters of discussion will be Hong Kong and the Middle East Peace Process. The meeting is the first EU meeting at ministerial level where ministers are physically present after the outbreak of the coronavirus epidemic.

The Foreign Ministry’s Salam project, which promotes peace and reconciliation, will continue in the form of annual workshops until 2023. The project aims to provide Iraqi and Afghan youth with opportunities for networking and accumulating knowledge about peace work and about how to use media skills as a way of exerting influence.

On 9 July, the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) ruled on an application brought against Finland concerning the return of an asylum seeker to Afghanistan.

Finland, under the leadership of Minister for Foreign Affairs Haavisto, invites EU foreign ministers to discuss the situation in the wider region on the Horn of Africa on 8 July. The conference will be attended by high-level representatives from the African Union, the European Union, and the United Nations.

On 30 October 2019, the foreign ministers of Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden decided to task Mr. Björn Bjarnason of Iceland to prepare an independ-ent report with non-binding proposals on how to further develop Nordic coopera-tion on foreign and security policy. This tasking marked ten years since Mr Thorvald Stoltenberg of Norway drafted a similar report presenting a range of recommenda-tions of which a large share have already been implemented.