Foreign Ministry's press releases

The EU General Affairs and External Relations Council (GAERC) will meet in Brussels on Monday, 15 September. The main theme of the meeting will be the situation in Georgia. Foreign Minister Alexander Stubb and Minister for Foreign Trade and Development Paavo Väyrynen will represent Finland at the GAERC meeting.

The Government of Finland decided to present on Thursday 11 September to the President of the Republic the ratification of the Treaty of Lisbon and the confirmation of the Act on the implementation of the Treaty. The President of the Republic is to decide on the matter on Friday 12 September.

The OSCE Special Representative, Eva Biaudet, urged OSCE participating States today to put victims' rights at the centre when investigating and prosecuting human trafficking cases. She opened a high-level conference in Helsinki on Wednesday, 10 September, wondering why victims are still being treated as criminals.

Reijo Kemppinen from Finland has been appointed the new Director of Communications at the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, EBRD. Mr Kemppinen is currently acting as Head of the European Commission Representation in the UK.

The crisis in Georgia has changed the politico-military situation in the OSCE area in a way that must be taken into account by the OSCE and its Forum for Security Co-operation (FSC), Pauli Järvenpää, the head of the defence policy department at the Finnish Defence Ministry, told the Forum today.

Mediators and observers in the Transdniestrian settlement negotiating process met today in Vienna to hold consultations in the 3+2 format.

Many poor developing countries, especially in sub-Saharan Africa, are caught in the trap of one-sided production with a low degree of refinement, which has forced them to finance their basic needs, to an unbearable extent, through debt and development aid. Minister for Foreign Trade and Development Paavo Väyrynen stressed the link between trade and development at a press conference held at the Ministry for Foreign Affairs on 9 September.

Minister for Foreign Affairs Alexander Stubb will participate in the foreign minister meeting of Nordic Countries and Baltic States - i.e. the so-called NB8 (Nordic-Baltic 8) group – to be held in Pärnu, Estonia, on 9-10 September.

The contact information for the departments of the Ministry for Foreign Affairs has changed. The new addresses and e-mail addresses were adopted as a result of the organisational reform of the Ministry that entered into force on 1 September.