METNET workshop, opening Speech

14.06.2011 12:29

Tuesday 13.1.2009

Deputy Speaker of the Parliament of Finland, Johannes Koskinen

 13.1.-14.1.2009 Hämeenlinna, Finland

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen!

I am happy to have this opportunity to visit your Metnet workshop in the City Hall of Hämeenlinna. We all in Hämeenlinna are interested in creating better international cooperation and development. I hope that this workshop will have constructive results and impacts on the development of each of our regions in Europe.

Finland joined the European Union on 1 January 1995. As a member state, Finland participates fully in EU decision-making and is also bound by EU decisions. EU regulations enter into force immediately. EU directives, on the other hand, require the implementation of specific goals at the national level. This often entails the amendment of national legislation.

The Finnish Parliament plays a strong role in decision-making on EU affairs, compared with many other member states. All the committees handle EU affairs, but Parliament’s positions are generally coordinated and decided by the Grand Committee. National parliaments are not directly represented in the European Union’s institutions. They participate in decision-making by monitoring and directing their own government’s EU policy, however.

On the European level, the weakness of many universities and research units is inadequate international connections. International recruiting in the research organisations, as well as a higher level of internationally educated students would promote a more harmonised Europe in the future.

At the moment, we live the period of uncertainty. Messages from the economies, globally and in many European countries, have recently been low-spirited. The European 200 billion euros recovery measures the expectations of European citizens against recession.

The measures of recovery, at least in political sense, may be divided into two groups of arrangements.

First of all, every developed country needs to have reasonably good arrangements in its society to cover the social needs on the citizens in the country. This implies that acceptable and adequate employment level in the economy needs to be sustained by proper social arrangements. The target would be – to protect the social security and old-age benefits as well as developing new associative elements in the working life.

Secondly, effective and employing activities in the market economy need to be reinforced.

Leaders of the big world economies are reforming the financial and regulatory systems; launching specific action plans to accomplish the complex issues. The statements introduce that the problems are too significant to try to solve, or to come up with reasonable recommendations in just one meeting.

The recovery needs to be built by joint efforts. Nothing can annul the positive output of citizen level activities and positive entrepreneurial actions. On the operating level, the confident attempts are necessary.

Thinking also about this workshop, these actions include, for example, active cooperative projecting and transnational activities between educational and research institutes in Europe.

Especially in Finland, internationalisation is a central part of the development of higher educational institutions. The national strategy for internationalisation of higher education is under preparation by the Ministry of Education.

At the moment, in terms of migration of highly educated populations, Finland seems to be a net loss nation. That is why the goal is to develop an internationally strong and attractive scientific and higher-education community in Finland. In the future, internationalisation will affect all parties in the higher education sector.

In Europe, the higher education units have also goals to increase the number of international students and staff. Recruitment of foreign personnel would become a permanent part of normal operations. By developing the international degree programs and international projecting activities in and between the higher educational institutions and research units, we are able to build up more coherent and effective institutions in Europe.

- A strong base for increased internationalisation can be achieved by working in projects internationally between European partners. At the same time, functioning international services need to be developed in the cooperating institutions.

Internationalisation of educational and research institutions is a phenomenon of skills, resources and structures.

I hope that the cooperative and mutual visions for the development in the future will give the Metnet partners new and attractive possibilities to become more international and even more cooperative in the eyes of European students and high level researchers worldwide.