Finland Seeks to Enhance Ties With Australia

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese welcomes Prime Minister of the Republic of Finland Sanna Marin, during a visit to Australia at Kirribilli House, in Sydney, Friday, December 2, 2022. AAP Image/Dan Himbrechts

Finland is seeking stronger bilateral relations with Australia, with Finnish Prime Minister Sanna Marin calling for the two nations to join their common lifelines and increase cooperation.

Marin is the first Finnish leader to have visited Australia.

Speaking at Lowy Institute on Dec. 2, Marin said Finland would like to increase cooperation around clean energy, critical raw materials and new technologies.

“We and Australia should join our lifelines together. We see important potential in increasing cooperation with you in areas such as clean energy, critical raw materials and new technologies,” Marin said.

The Finnish prime minister also said that Finland saw Australia as a critical partner to build bridges between the Euro-Atlantic and Indo-pacific regions.

“Cooperation among progressive democracies is now more important than ever. We need to defend our common values, universal human rights and democracy with new force, new determination. We need to build bridges across the Euro-Atlantic and the Indo-Pacific regions,” she said.

“This is the right time for the first ever visit of a Finnish Prime Minister to Australia. This is the right moment to strengthen our bilateral relations.”

Finnish Prime Minister Sanna Marin addresses the media during the first day of a German federal government cabinet retreat at Schloss Meseberg in Germany, on May 3, 2022. Hannibal Hanschke/Getty Images

Finland and Australian bilateral relations have been increasing with exports to Australia have increased every year, with 40 subsidiaries of Finnish companies, and more than 120 Finnish brands operating in the Australian market.

According to a media release from the Finnish government trade body Business Finland, Australia offers a huge opportunity for Finnish companies.

“There is very little local competition in Australia, as only 5 percent of its GDP is generated by manufacturing. This is a low figure, compared to 30 percent in Finland, for example. The country favours Western quality and Australians are not keen to buy Chinese technology, for example. The country also has 25 million well-off people and a business culture similar to Finland’s,” Eero Toivainen, Senior Advisor for Business Finland in Australia said.

Democratic Nations Need to Pivot Critical Ties Away From Russia and China

Marin highlighted that Finland was moving to address its strategic dependency on authoritarian countries, like Russia and China, by seeking deeper cooperation with other democratic partners.

“Open, democratic and progressive societies also need stronger strategic autonomy in critically important areas for their citizens, and this must be supported by trusted partnerships,” she said.

She said that this did not meant countries should not trade or have connections to China.

“But those critical dependencies that we must get rid of, so that we have also alternative trading routes that we have the know how the knowledge the new technologies for our digitalized societies,” she said. “We cannot be dependent, for example, microchips or semiconductors or any kind of critical technologies when it comes to authoritarian countries because if those trading routes would be caught suddenly then we would be in trouble.”

An employee works in the chip manufacturing process at a clean room of the Barcelona Institute for Microelectronics (IMB-CNM) in Bellaterra, near Barcelona, on March 3, 2022. Josep Lago/AFP via Getty Images

Further, she said that one of the biggest challenges that has been demonstrated by the Russian-Ukrainian war has been that the international rules based order is at risk.

“The international rules based order is being challenged. There are countries like Russia that is now putting the rules aside and doing whatever they want, and this is something that we cannot approve,” she said.

“So we must stand behind our values and understand that there is more a fight concerning values going on in the world. And we have to make sure that our values the democratic values will win.”

Finland And Australia to Work Together on Technology

In a joint statement on Dec. 2 between Marin and Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, both leaders declared they were willing to strengthen cooperation and information exchange in digitalisation, wireless communications technologies, and high performance computing including artificial intelligence (AI) and quantum, the data economy, and clean energy transition.

“There are such enormous opportunities, including with digitalisation, including with the use of renewable energy,” Albanese said.

“We have an abundance of renewable assets ... we produce just about every mineral that will go into an electric vehicle, for example. And I know that in terms of the supply chain issue, I think that’s an area where we can cooperate if we look at future industries, the opportunities that are there are boundless between us.”

Further the Prime Ministers agreed to look into the possibility of creating a bilateral cyber and technology policy exchange to develop multi-stakeholder collaboration between public and private sectors.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese with his dog Toto, welcomes Prime Minister of the Republic of Finland Sanna Marin, during a visit to Australia at Kirribilli House, in Sydney, Friday, December 2, 2022. AAP Image/Dan Himbrechts

The official visit from Marin comes just months before Australia enters into final negotiations with the European Union on the Australia-EU Free Trade Agreement.

Finland has been a vocal supporter of the agreement with Albanese thanking Marin for her government’s strong support on Dec. 2.

“I do want to take the opportunity as well to thank you for Finland’s strong support for the Australia-EU Free Trade Agreement that we are hoping to finalise in 2023. We want to share economic relationships with our democracies,” Albanese said.