Finland

Despite studying politics, I rarely use this blog for making my political arguments known and I will refrain from party politics now as well. However, I must be sickeningly patriotic today because I am just so proud of Finland.

I recently did a group presentation with Anne, Nikki and Nicola. The topic was Research in the Lisbon Strategy and we had Finland and Italy as our case studies. When I was researching for Finland I discovered how well it is actually doing in R&D, like staggeringly magnificent, above and beyond the targets set by Lisbon which other countries claim are "utopia".

Then today when I was going through my daily news intake I discover an article on EurActiv, entitled "Finns plan massive R&D increase to fight crisis". So in the midst of a financial crisis when all the other countries are cutting back in R&D and adjusting their policies to more short-term perspective, my precious country has the wisdom to take a long-term approach and actually increase funding in R&D!

Maybe I'm naive here and the few macroeconomics courses that I have taken did not do the trick for me but is this not exactly the way all the countries should be behaving? When the financial crisis will go away, which it eventually will, Finland will once again come on top. And by once again I mean that after the bank crisis we had in the beginning of the 90s what emerged out of it? You heard of Nokia? Haha, we will rule the world!

And to show I'm not completely loony here, Sapir's report on the EU budget also emphasised EU's need to invest in growth and innovation which is exactly what Finland is doing now.

So today I am happy. I might have that exam that I have not really studied for but who cares. Tomorrow I will be in Finland!