News

The European Commission yesterday, 26 April, published its reflection paper on the social dimension of Europe. This discusses the EU’s various options for the future from the perspective of the social dimension. Prime Minister Juha Sipilä's thoughts on the paper.

In support of the ongoing discussion on simplification of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), the Nordic and Baltic countries Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Latvia, Lithuania and Sweden introduced a list of simplification proposals for CAP. Consisting of a list of 67 concrete measures with objective to help the farmers’ work and ease the administrative burden, the proposal reflects the principles of subsidiarity, proportionality and sound management.

In March, for Finnish farmers as everywhere, spring heralds planning and fieldwork. Cultivation plans are finalised and parcel data are declared as the baseline data for support applications. Every spring the complex support framework leads to complications in the planning, frustrating the farmers and causing unnecessary fears of making mistakes.

In November, the European Commission issued some legislative proposals related to the union’s objectives for 2030 and the development of an Energy Union. The actual discussion of the initiatives is now beginning both in the EU’s Council of Ministers and in the European Parliament. However, one will still have to wait for a long time for these regulations to be completed.

Finland’s newest icebreaker Polaris is ready to enter service. Icebreaker Polaris is unique in many ways. It is the first icebreaker in the world capable of running on both liquefied natural gas (LNG) and ultra-low-sulphur diesel. Its total output of about 22 MW also makes it Finland’s most powerful icebreaker. Polaris is the most environmentally friendly diesel-electric icebreaker in the world.

Finland is a country of trees and never-ending forests. According to rough estimates, there are about ten trees per every person in the world in the Finnish forests. In cubic meters, the forest capacity in Finland has never been so large ever since known history of National Forest Inventories (NFI). Due to a history of almost hundred years of data collection, Finland has a vast storage of information of its forests.

EU Ministers for the Environment agreed to speed up the process for the ratification of Paris agreement during an extraordinary Environment Council meeting on 30 September 2016 in Brussels. In Finland the preparations of the government proposal for the national ratification of the Paris agreement are well underway.