Minister Skinnari to lead a consultative group to support foreign trade

A consultative group on trade policy, led by Minister for Development Cooperation and Foreign Trade Ville Skinnari, will be set up to work out solutions to the challenges posed by the coronavirus pandemic for Finnish foreign trade both with third countries and in the EU single market.

The consultative group will be formed of invited members from ministries and public authorities that play a central role in foreign trade. These include, among others, the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Employment, the Ministry of Transport and Communications, the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry, and the Ministry of Finance as well as certain actors operating under their supervision.

The consultative group is formed for the first time. Its aim is to create a comprehensive situational picture of the negative impacts and threats posed by the crisis to foreign trade and to explore ways in which different public authorities can together help to minimise problems. The group will discuss foreign trade from a wide perspective, paying attention to questions concerning export, import and logistics.

The group’s other key task will be to find ways in which Finnish business life remains fully operational until the preconditions for foreign trade improve after the pandemic recedes. In the group, representatives of business and industry will have a chance to raise problems that they have detected and to offer solutions to them. The work of the consultative group will begin on 6 April 2020.

More information: Ilkka-Pekka Similä, Director General of the Department for External Economic Relations, tel. +358 29 535 0257.

The email addresses of the Ministry for Foreign Affairs are in the format [email protected]