Foreign Ministry's press releases

Minister for Foreign Affairs Timo Soini will visit Latvia and meet the Latvian Minister of Foreign Affairs Edgars Rinkēvičs in Riga on Wednesday 13 January. The topics of the Ministers' bilateral discussions will include the bilateral relations between Finland and Latvia, regional cooperation, migration and other topical international issues.

Minister for Foreign Affairs Timo Soini strongly condemns the announcement of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (North Korea) according to which it has conducted a hydrogen bomb test on 6 January.

The Finnish Presidency will focus on the following themes: water know-how; Nordic nature, sustainable development and international climate commitments; Nordic welfare society; digitalisation; dismantling cross-border barriers between the Nordic countries.

Finns are crazy about ski jumping: some get their thrills soaring off a slope at more than 100 kilometres an hour, while others cheer on their national champions from the comfort of their sofas at home. This obsession with ski jumping has inspired a little New Year’s Eve gift from the Finnish Ministry for Foreign Affairs: an emoji immortalising all-time ski jumping legend Matti Nykänen.

In the last humanitarian aid funding allocation of the current year, Finland has awarded with the decision by the Minister for Foreign Trade and Development Lenita Toivakka a total of EUR 17.4 million to two UN organizations – The World Food Program WFP and the refugee organization UNHCR – for their work concerning long-running and underfunded crises in Middle East and Africa.

At the 10th Ministerial Conference of the World Trade Organization (WTO), the Government of Finland announced it will donate EUR 10 million for trade-related support to least-developed countries for the years 2016–2020.

Minister for Foreign Affairs Timo Soini will attend the meeting of the General Affairs Council in Brussels on Tuesday 15 December.

Finland and Latvia hosted the first informal breakfast meeting with Foreign Minister Vladimir Makei of Belarus on 14 December. In the meeting Minister Makei underlined Belarus' commitment to promoting human rights and democracy in the country. In order to further advance exchange of views, several EU Foreign Ministers stressed that consistent action is important to strengthen the rule of law in Belarus, including abolition of capital punishment.

The Nordic Foreign Ministers met and discussed migration and refugee crisis matters in Brussels on 14 December. Migration and the refugee crisis call for comprehensive action. The Ministers share the concern over the consequences of uncontrolled migration. They exchanged views on the best practices for integrating immigrants.

Minister for Foreign Trade and Development Lenita Toivakka will travel to the 10th Ministerial Conference of the World Trade Organization WTO (MC10) in Nairobi, Kenya, on 15–18 December. This is the first time that a WTO Ministerial Conference is organised in Africa.