Finnish prime minister calls for deeper EU integration

March 11, 2020 / By mobanmarket

Finnish prime minister calls for deeper EU integration

Jyrki Katainen addresses MEPs.

Jyrki Katainen, Finland’s prime minister, warned in a speech at the European Parliament that austerity policies in the European Union have “undermined people’s trust in the European project” and said that Europe’s leaders ought to respond to popular fears by charting “a credible, pragmatic way forward”.

Speaking on Tuesday (16 April), the centre-right Katainen rejected ideas of a federal Europe as too abstract and stressed that the immediate challenge was to boost the EU’s competitiveness.

“We need both more Europe and more national responsibility,” he told MEPs. “Deeper European integration is the right way forward,” he said, but he also stressed the need to “make sure the overwhelming majority of Europeans find integration to be just and fair”.

He also warned: “ If we fail to curb tax evasion and tax havens, we undermine our own efforts to build a better Europe” – a point taken up by José Manuel Barroso, the president of the European Commission, and several MEPs in the debate on the “future of Europe” that followed his speech.

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Hannes Swoboda, the leader of the centre-left Socialists and Democrats group in the Parliament, accused Katainen of taking “a very ideological position” on the financial transactions tax that 11 member states – Finland is not among them – have agreed to introduce.