James Forsyth James Forsyth

How the Finns might rock the European boat

Normally, the results of the Finnish elections don’t merit much discussion. But the success of the True Finns, the only party to put on seats in the elections there last week, could have a major impact on this country.
 
The True Finns ran almost as a single issue party during the final week of the campaign. Their message: we’ll say no to bailing out other Eurozone countries. Seeing as they are almost certainly going to be part of the next Finnish government, this rather throws a spanner in the works of Brussels’ plan to bail out Portugal.
 
Now, as Dan Hannan notes, if the Finns were to veto the use of the Eurozone funded European Financial Stability Facility to bail out Portugal, all the burden of doing so would fall on the European Financial Stabilisation Mechanism, to which Britain is a party.

This raises two intriguing questions. First, if Britain’s share of the bailouts rise, will the Treasury do anything to try and limit Britain’s contributions? Second, if the True Finns are successful in getting Finland exempted from contributing to the bail out of Portugal, what boost will that give to other Eurosceptic parties across Europe?

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