Finnished.

later12

Okay I admit it, I stole that title from The FT.

http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5jSg2zDvaUd1HKRxiZqseyH0M8goQ?docId=CNG.03c0e67179e2f7de4a72d4d699c0b830.8a1

HELSINKI — Finns turned out in droves on Sunday for a parliamentary vote marked by the meteoric rise of the nationalist True Finns party, which could tip the political scale to the right and even block Finnish approval of EU bailouts.
The latest polls handed a slim lead to the National Coalition, a conservative, junior member of the outgoing centre-right government, just ahead of Prime Minister Mari Kiviniemi's Centre Party and the opposition Social Democrats (SDP) battling for second place.

Something that I think has gone a little bit under the radar on here, and in the mainstream media, has been the likelihood of a strong performance by the nationalist 'True Finns' party in today's Finnish election.

The populist, anti-immigration, right-wing party has largely shaped the campaign debate with its calls to flatly reject EU bailouts to debt-ridden member states and to abandon the euro, a message which resonated with many people from other parties as well.

How could this impact upon the inevitable Greek debt restructuring? Upon the Portuguese bailout, and indeed upon future bailouts? As Europeans look at Greece and for the first time since last Autumn, are again seriously asking whether the crisis mechanism is working, and with the Finnish election possibly catalysing or at least representing disillusion with regards to the bailout procedures, I think investors and businesses have grounds to worry about sovereign debt going further into 2011. This is all getting a bit messy.

beeftotheheels

It is worrying. Merkel and Sarkozy will be watching and pondering the impact on their own electorates no doubt, which is one of the significant issues with the bail-out mechanisms being multi-lateral rather than EU in the its framework.

On an aside, I was googling for recipes earlier and had decided to try cooking peas with nettles as one of the vegetable dishes for dinner this evening which I found on the ITV website. I hope we don't end up eating nettles out of necessity rather than choice before all this is over!

loldog

The imposition of EU project would be a lot easier if the EU was a dictatorship.

.

Dob74

This is hardly a surprise. Why in gods name do we expect the taxpayers of France, Germany and the other eurozone countries to loan us money?
This will make the default or break up of the euro or burden sharing come quicker.
Time for decisions to be made.