Current affairs

Operations of the Embassy of Finland in Tokyo were transferred on 18 March to a temporary office in Hiroshima. The embassy will open on Tuesday, 22 March, after the local holiday. It provides consular services and in a limited manner visa services. Resident permit applications can not be handled at the moment.

The Foreign Ministry follows continuously the situation of Japan and the Finnish citizens still in the country after the earthquake. Up-to-date information is especially important right now. “We hope that people would report themselves to the Ministry for Foreign Affairs after they have left Japan if they have not done it yet,” Minister Stubb appealed on 15 March. The Ministry will assist Finns still in Japan to leave the country, but evacuation is not considered necessary at the moment.

The Ministry for Foreign Affairs has now accounted for all of the over 800 Finnish nationals who are known to be in Japan. They were reached via the Ministry’s crisis management lines and the Facebook and Twitter pages of the Finnish Embassy in Tokyo. Intelligent Priority SMS services provided another means of contact. The telephone helpline 0800 0 4444 (number from abroad +358 800 0 4444) remains open.

Football isn’t the only sport to hold a world cup in 2010. At the other end of the earth from South Africa, in the Finnish capital, more international sports drama plays out as the Finns defend their title at the World Floorball Championship.

The winning entry in the architectural competition held by the Ministry for Foreign Affairs for the Finnish Embassy building in Tokyo was AIKI, the entry by Architects Lahdelma & Mahlamäki Ltd. “The most important is to create an image of Finland. The Embassy must represent Finland in the right way,” said Rainer Mahlamäki on behalf of the winning architects’ office at the event held to publicise the results on 13 March.

New Ambassadors: Mäenpää to Bangkok, Gustafsson to Tokyo and Tanzi-Albi to Cairo.

Minister for Foreign Affairs Ilkka Kanerva met on Tuesday 28 August with his Japanese colleague, Minister for Foreign Affairs Nobutaka Machimura, who received his Finnish counterpart already the day after he had taken up his Cabinet post. This was the first ministerial meeting of Foreign Minister Machimura’s term of office, which began on 27 August.