On 17 July 1985, ministers of seventeen Western European countries gathered in Paris to celebrate the birth of Eureka, a novel programme planned to enhance the position of Europe's technology in the tightening global competition. At the dinner, organised in the magnificent Palais de l’Élysée, the two men who had more reason to smile than most were the French president and host of the meeting, François Mitterrand, whose new grand design of European collaboration had finally come to fruition, and Jermu Laine, the Finnish minister for foreign trade, who appeared equally unable to hide his enormous pride and relief. If for the French leader the political success of Eureka related to his objective to strengthen the European technological base and to gain some independence from Europe's main competitors, especially the United States, for the Finn the celebration at Élysée symbolised a happy end of the previous weeks’ intensive diplomatic wrangling.Footnote 1 After the sudden and conspicuous exclusion of Finland from the conference invitation list, followed by a laborious and humiliating process of persuasion and begging entry to the Élysée at the very last moment, the presence of the Finnish delegation at the event could be interpreted as nothing less than an obvious moment of political victory. However, even after toasting the newborn brainchild of President Mitterrand and expressing the sublime words of praise and contentment, there were a number of disquieting questions hanging in the air. Why had the Finns not initially been invited? Why did they so desperately want to attend? Was it just a minor diplomatic battle over a conference invitation or actually a bargain over something bigger, more profound and more decisive?
This article shows how the extraordinary political process preceding Finland's acceptance into Eureka unveiled a gradual reorientation of Finnish foreign policy in the mid-1980s.Footnote 2 Contrary to a commonly held view,Footnote 3 the fundamental political change in Finland, which ultimately led to membership in the European Union in 1995, was not just a reaction to the political turmoil of 1989–1991 and the definitive end of the Cold War, but also a result of a steady development that had already started years earlier. This development was a direct response to structural changes in global-scale transcending and gradually dismantling the Cold War order.
Fundamentally, the reappraisal of Finnish policy related to three parallel processes of international transformation: first, the 1980s brought significant changes to the world economy as well as to the national economic policies of capitalist countries. Market liberalisation and the IT revolution were not new phenomena, but only now did their imperatives become central parameters for national policy-making across Western Europe. In Finland, the government started to actively look for new ways to enhance the country's international competitiveness while engaging in the creation of a ‘knowledge society’. All this went hand in hand with the rapid internationalisation of Finnish business and the deregulation of the Finnish economy. Second, there were the new prospects for Western European integration, opened up by the strong interest of the European Community (EC) member states in proceeding with the project of creating a single market and realising major institutional reform. By 1985 it was obvious that the EC was about to take a big leap forward and there was no way Finland could remain unaffected by these ambitions. One can observe an increasing Western European orientation in Finnish foreign and foreign trade policy from the mid-1980s onwards. Last but not least, the dramatic deterioration of the Soviet economy and research and development (R&D) after the mid-1970s gradually but pervasively shifted the international power balance. By the middle of the following decade it had become painstakingly clear that the Soviet Union was in a state of prolonged and serious systemic decline. The global high-tech competition that increasingly determined the international position of nation states took place between the capitalist economies. They formed an interconnected space of trade and knowledge transfer from which the Soviets were cut off.Footnote 4 For countries like Finland that traded extensively with the Soviet Union, this had a major political significance. During the 1980s, finding new markets in the West became imperative.
Eureka membership was one of the first powerful indicators of the altered perceptions of the Finnish decision makers and a distinct reaction to the transforming international conditions. A response to technological change and sharpened global economic competition, Eureka has been praised as a decisive move towards a high-tech economy and thereby a necessary chapter in the national success story which represented the country's rapid recovery from the deep recession of the early 1990s.Footnote 5 But there is more to the story: the effort to be part of the initiative signified a bold departure from traditional Finnish European policy, characterised by systematic caution on politically sensitive matters. Finland's awkward position between the two Cold War blocs had greatly limited the country's political room for manoeuvre and had determined its approach toward European integration since 1945.Footnote 6 Bearing in mind how intertwined the politics of European integration and the concerns of the Cold War were, the determination of the government to rush headlong into a widely contested initiative is remarkable. Although the political change was far from being complete – caution characterised some subsequent overtures toward Western Europe – it is clear that, by 1985, assessing the political environment and possibilities for action through the conventional Cold War prism was no longer the absolute norm for the Finnish leaders. If anything, the tale of Finland's dramatic entry to Eureka shows how in the still seemingly stable political reality of the mid-1980s, the horizons of expectation had already started to move.
Eureka – A Door Ajar?
Since the mid-1960s there had been signs of a major transformation in industrial production that increasingly relied on sophisticated technology and knowledge. Rapid development in computer technology and communication technologies was accompanied by progressive market liberalisation and important geographical shifts in international distribution of labour. By the 1980s these trends were accentuated. Moreover, in Western Europe, the Reagan administration's massive national investment in US R&D and the rocket-like rise of Japan's high-tech sector around the same time roused the old worries of a ‘technology gap’ between Europe and other capitalist regions.Footnote 7
This is the crucial background for Eureka. In April 1985 President François Mitterrand, sceptical about the EC's ability to provide an efficient framework for European cooperation in high-technology,Footnote 8 launched the initiative that his Foreign Minister Roland Dumas described in the following words:
This project will consist in setting up an agency for the coordination of European research. . .whose structures will remain very slight. This agency, which will have legal and financial autonomy, could be made responsible for the coherent organisation of research and development activities in the countries concerned, for example, in the following subjects: optronics, new equipment, power lasers, large computers, artificial intelligence, very quick and very small micro-electronics. . . . The planned research will cover many different actors in civilian areas, of course, but also in the military field.Footnote 9
Eureka was a continuation of earlier debates and plans at the Élysée aimed at providing a French initiative to boost European scientific and technological performance.Footnote 10
In Finland Eureka provoked immediate attention. The Finnish Ministry for Foreign Affairs was instantly informed by the embassies in Paris and Brussels about a new French initiative that seemed to be open to countries which were not members of the European Community.Footnote 11 Eureka was briefly addressed by the French Research Minister, Hubert Curien, and the Finnish Minister for Industry and Trade, Seppo Lindblom, during the visit of the latter to Paris on 24 April 1985. However, neither minister raised the question of Finnish participation.Footnote 12 Meanwhile, the French expressed their wish that, in addition to the EC countries, Austria, Norway, Sweden and Switzerland would also contribute to the undertaking. Around the same time, the Finnish diplomats got wind of discussions between the French and some European Free Trade Association (EFTA) countries about possible participation.Footnote 13
For Finland EFTA formed an significant reference group, whose importance only increased over the course of the 1980s.Footnote 14 Since the governments of EFTA countries were said to have actively expressed their interest in Eureka, officials of the Finnish Ministry for Foreign Affairs decided to follow suit. After discussions with State Secretary Paavo Kaarlehto and Ambassador Leif Blomqvist, the Finnish Ambassador in Paris, Ossi Sunell, told François Plaisant, Head of the Department for European Affairs at the Quai d'Orsay, that the Finns would also like to be informed about the development of Eureka in order to form their own position. Plaisant promised to keep Finland in the loop regarding the development of the project.Footnote 15
The plea of Ambassador Sunell seems to have reached Minister Dumas, who publicly mentioned Finland several times as a potential member of Eureka.Footnote 16 In the meantime, the project proceeded rapidly: at the EC summit held in Milan on 28−29 June, the French managed to convince the other Community members to back the initiative. They also announced the organisation of a specific Eureka conference at the ministerial level in Paris in the following month.Footnote 17 However, by the time of the Milan summit, Finland had mysteriously disappeared from French speeches about the future Eureka members. Neither did Finland seem to be included in the invitation list that was drafted for the forthcoming Eureka conference. The exclusion from the group of invited countries was confirmed on 30 June when Minister Dumas announced the sixteen countries that would participate in Eureka on French television − Finland was not mentioned.Footnote 18
For the staff of the Finnish foreign ministry this came as a complete surprise. What could have caused this sudden turn of events? Keen to find this out, the Deputy Head of the Department of External Economic Relations, Veli Sundbäck, sent a telegram to the Finnish embassies in Athens, Bonn, Brussels, Copenhagen, the Hague, London, Paris and Rome asking them to investigate discussions and decisions concerning the invitation of non-EC countries to Eureka as well as meetings related to the initiative.Footnote 19 Two days later Sundbäck sent another telegram to Finland's delegations in Switzerland, Norway, Sweden and Austria asking if these countries had received an invitation to the Eureka conference.Footnote 20 The responses to the inquiry confirmed that all four governments had been invited and were planning to attend.Footnote 21 Finland seemed to be the only capitalist Western European country left out.
This was not the kind of position in which the foreign ministry staff wanted to find their country. Since the Finnish diplomats were tipped off that the explanation for the mysterious removal from the invitation list could only be obtained from Paris,Footnote 22 Finland's delegation there was instructed to contact the French authorities. Their message, aimed at the highest possible level and intended to be delivered as soon as possible, was simple: the government of Finland wished to attend Eureka and requested an invitation to the conference.Footnote 23
Meanwhile, the Finnish government gave its official blessing to the ambitions to participate in Eureka. The minutes of the decisive meeting of 4 July, which both Prime Minister Kalevi Sorsa and Foreign Minister Paavo Väyrynen attended, are very short, but they indicate a strong consensus on the issue.Footnote 24 With this strong mandate, the Finnish delegation in Paris arranged a meeting between Ambassador Sunell and General Secretary André Ross of the Department of European Affairs at the Quai d'Orsay.Footnote 25 It was a disappointment. Ross claimed that the issue of invitation did not belong to France alone but necessitated an approval of the other EC countries − which, however, could not be consulted due to time constraints. He nevertheless assured that Finland could participate in Eureka projects at some later stage.Footnote 26
The situation seemed hopeless: there was hardly a week left before the conference and the French position remained unwavering. So the issue was moved to a higher political level. After having spoken with President Mauno Koivisto, Foreign Minister Väyrynen invited the French Ambassador, Marcel Beaux, to his office. Väyrynen stressed to Beaux how important it would be for Finland to attend the discussions on Eureka at an early stage. He could not see how postponing its participation would be a better solution. Furthermore, he mentioned that President Koivisto was about to send a letter to President Mitterrand concerning the meeting and that he himself would call Foreign Minister Dumas that very same evening. These measures, Väyrynen emphasised, showed the significance of this issue for Finland − also from a political point of view. He reminded Beaux that he was speaking as the deputy prime minister and on behalf of the whole Finnish government.Footnote 27
That same evening Paavo Väyrynen called Roland Dumas to tell him about Ross's statement, his discussions with Beaux and Koivisto's letter. Dumas did not seem to be aware of all the details and reiterated the argument made by both Ross and Beaux about the necessity to consult the other EC members. Väyrynen referred to the probable participation of other EFTA countries in Eureka and the messages received from the Western European capitals which stated that the organisation of the conference was France's responsibility. Moreover, Väyrynen emphasised, the general attitude to Finnish participation seemed to be positive. At the end of the discussion, Dumas promised to settle the issue.Footnote 28
At this point, relying on the French minister's words would have been risky. Instead of simply waiting for Quai d'Orsey to act, the staff of the Finnish foreign ministry decided to continue lobbying and to find the required support of all EC members themselves. On 10 July Veli Sundbäck asked the Finnish embassies in Athens, Bern, Bonn, Brussels, Copenhagen, the Hague, Lisbon, London, Madrid, Oslo, Paris, Rome, Stockholm and Vienna to find out how contentious the attendance of Finland at the Paris conference would actually be. The telegram also included a plea for these countries to send a rapid and positive message to France regarding the matter.Footnote 29 Similarly, a request for active support was transmitted to the cabinet of Jacques Delors, the President of the European Commission.Footnote 30
The decisive move, however, seems to have been the letter of Mauno Koivisto to François Mitterrand.Footnote 31 Prime Minister Kalevi Sorsa, who not only knew Mitterrand personally but also spoke French, had called the Élysée and received the hint that an official signal from the president would help.Footnote 32 As a result, Koivisto wrote to his French counterpart about Finland's interest in participating in the first Eureka conference and Ross's statement that it was too late to invite Finland. In addition, Koivisto pointed out how important it would be to attend right from the beginning and stressed the significance of the negative attention that would be the unavoidable consequence of absence. He ended with an open plea for the French government to do everything in its power to ensure that Finland would receive an invitation to the conference.Footnote 33
Almost immediately after the receipt of Koivisto's letter the situation began to change. When Ossi Sunell called André Ross the same afternoon, Ross told him that the issue was developing positively. Later, a similar message came from François Plaisant.Footnote 34 Encouraging news also arrived from the other Western European capitals declaring support for Finland.Footnote 35 Finally, late in the evening of 13 July the Finnish Ministry for Foreign Affairs received a letter from Roland Dumas containing an official invitation to the Eureka conference.Footnote 36
The diplomatic effort to secure a seat for Finland in the Eureka conference was clearly extraordinary. But why was the Finnish government, traditionally wary of open proactivity as regards Western European integration, now ready to break ranks and engage in such manifest action?
Adjusting to the New Europe
After its survival as an independent and democratic state in the Second World War, Finland was left in a rather uncomfortable international position between the Cold War fronts. The policy of neutrality, adopted as the guiding foreign policy principle around the mid-1950s, was not only a means to reassure the Soviets about the security of its eastern border, but also a way of gaining some distance from Moscow.Footnote 37 During the Cold War, Finland's policy toward European integration became subordinated to the ‘metadoctrine’ of Finnish neutrality. ‘The essence of the “metadoctrine”’, Esko Antola writes, ‘customarily phrased as policy of neutrality, implies a commitment to the Post-War political and security position of Finland as a status quo country in Europe’.Footnote 38 With stability and credibility as key objectives of foreign policy, dealing with the West became a real act of tightrope walking, constantly sensing the limits of Soviet goodwill and tolerance.Footnote 39 Consequently, Finland either remained outside or participated only later in most of the Western organisations created after 1945.Footnote 40
Caution was also the determining principle in Finland's participation in Western European technological and scientific cooperation. In the first decades of the Cold War, Finland remained outside practically all cooperative arrangements and preferred contacts with the Nordic countries.Footnote 41 This Nordic cooperation served as an important balance to the Treaty on Scientific and Technical Cooperation (Tieteellis-tekninen yhteistyösopimus; TT treaty), concluded with the Soviet Union in 1955. The treaty proved a genuinely unique case; at that time, there was no corresponding arrangement between the Soviets and a capitalist country.Footnote 42 Finland also participated in the existing forums of multilateral cooperation that included countries both from the East and the West, such as the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA).Footnote 43 However, the number of forums like this was low: due to the sensitive role of technology and science in the Cold War world, most cooperation took place in closed organisations with a clear bloc basis or within bilateral arrangements between individual countries.Footnote 44
In most intergovernmental arenas of Western European scientific and technological cooperation, Finland was thus a latecomer.Footnote 45 The Finns joined the European Science Foundation (ESF, founded in 1974) in 1981,Footnote 46 and full membership in the European Organisation for Nuclear Research (CERN, established already in 1949), was postponed until 1991. Finland signed an association agreement with the European Space Agency (ESA, created in 1975) in 1986, which then led to full membership in 1994. Participation in EC activity was not deemed possible until the signature of the bilateral agreement between the EC and Finland in 1986.Footnote 47 At first sight it might have seemed that the loose intergovernmental cooperation in the context of European Cooperation in Science and Technology (COST) would form an exception: Finland became a founding member of this organisation, which was initiated by the EC but finally realised outside the Community structures in 1971. COST, however, at its very inception, fell victim of national politics and never evolved into a major European forum.Footnote 48 Moreover, in COST, the Finns stayed outside all politically sensitive projects.Footnote 49
An attentive reader might notice a certain convergence in timing: Finland approached several European scientific organisations and programmes around the mid-1980s. In fact, as much as 90 per cent of all national accords on international technological cooperation in force in 1986 had been made after 1978.Footnote 50 This is not a pure coincidence. By that time strengthening the technological and scientific links to Western Europe had become an important policy objective for the Finnish government and a pioneering field for forging closer contacts with the West.
In the 1970s only a few Finnish companies invested significant sums of money in research and development. Most firms transferred and adopted technology from abroad without engaging in ambitious R&D activity.Footnote 51 By the next decade, however, attitudes and strategies had changed.Footnote 52 The energy crises and the fluctuations of Soviet trade created growing concern about the competitiveness of Finnish industry. This, together with the perceptions of the narrowness of the Finnish production structureFootnote 53 and the mounting challenges of the IT revolution, not only provoked Finnish companies to invest in technology-intensive sectors,Footnote 54 but also urged the government to develop new policies encouraging R&D. One of the most visible signposts in the history of Finnish technology policy was the report of the Technology Committee, published in 1980. The document underlined the importance of investments in technology to secure national competitiveness and economic growth. Another remarkable move was the government decision of August 1982, which laid down the objectives and operation of Finnish technology policy. In that document the government committed itself to the goal, initially set by the Technology Committee, of increasing the share of public investment in research from 1.2 per cent of the GDP to 1.7 per cent by 1986 and to over 2 per cent by 1990. In addition, the government urged the creation of national technology programmes in strategic sectors and rushed through the foundation of Tekes, the Finnish Funding Agency for Technology and Innovation.Footnote 55 Throughout the 1980s the national R&D effort grew at a rate of about 10 per cent in real terms, reaching the level of 2.9 per cent of GDP in 1998.Footnote 56
Fears that Finland was lagging behind its Western European competitorsFootnote 57 and the simultaneous political efforts to create a ‘knowledge society’ largely explain why Eureka became such an important issue. Eureka was a good match for new governmental objectives that not only aspired to strengthen Finnish R&D but also made internationalisation one of its top priorities.Footnote 58 Yet the prospect of acquiring valuable technological know-how was not the only attraction of Eureka. What differentiated Eureka from Finland's participation in other European R&D organisations was its highly mediatised and politicised profile. Earlier overtures had been low-key ventures with little political tension. As much as it was about high-tech, Eureka was also about Finland's public image. A recurrent concern in the Finnish foreign ministry in the Eureka battle was the ‘negative attention’ that staying outside the initiative would inevitably attract.Footnote 59 Even President Koivisto mentioned this worrying prospect in his letter to Mitterrand.Footnote 60 Launched with a lot of fanfare and high expectations, Eureka became a very sensitive issue among Finnish decision makers increasingly concerned about belonging to the right reference group. In autumn 1985 the Minister for Foreign Trade, Jermu Laine, publicly encouraged his fellow Finns to consider how ‘our profile could be brightened in order to make it better correspond to the reality’.Footnote 61 Very soon, concrete political measures were taken to polish Finland's image in the West.Footnote 62
The public humiliation of the Eureka saga was only made worse by the obstinate silence of the French on the fundamental reasons for their rejection. This gave room to an abundance of different interpretations: the traditional passivity of Finnish integration policy and the unfamiliarity of Western Europeans with Finnish technology,Footnote 63 the (alleged) decision of the conveners of the Paris meeting to invite only the members of the Council of Europe,Footnote 64 the failure of the Finns to express their willingness to participate clearly and early enoughFootnote 65 and the fears of technology leak from Finland to the Soviet UnionFootnote 66 were all taken to explain Finland's sudden disappearance from the invitation list. Newly released sources from the archive of the French ministry for foreign affairs, however, suggest a more complex picture. In the summer of 1985 two prospective commercial deals between France and Finland had run into difficulty: negotiations between Air France and Finnair on the sale of French aeroplanes had been suspended in March,Footnote 67 while the attempt of three French companies (Alsthom, Conegma and Framatome) to sell a nuclear plant to Finland was threatened by tense competition with Soviet and Swedish competitors.Footnote 68 A handwritten note dated 8 July and destined for François Plaisant conveys a French plot to exchange Eureka for economic favours. ‘As you know’, an anonymous official wrote,
the Finnish ambassador has been instructed to raise this issue during his meeting with the Secretary General, scheduled for this afternoon at 5 pm. I propose that in his answer, M. Ross would suggest – without explicitly referring to it – a link between a possible invitation in the future to participate in certain projects, and, on their part, a very concrete manifestation of support for Western high technology (by which I mean French – and nuclear). If in the following months we had to, in one way or another, accept Finland to Eureka, it would be appropriate to obtain serious compensation.Footnote 69
Finland's Eureka membership, in other words, became hostage to commercial calculations, hatched in the dim corridors of Quai d'Orsay. It is interesting, however, that none of the Finnish diplomats seemed to be aware of this intrigue, which apparently found little support in the upper levels of the French political machinery.
Testing the Waters
While the pressure to redress the country's technological performance and public image increased, the difficulties with Soviet trade were also mounting. In the early 1980s the Soviet Union was Finland's most important trading partner with an almost 30 per cent share of the country's total foreign trade. Of the capitalist countries, only West Germany traded more with the Soviets than Finland. In many respects this business was lucrative: it constituted a closed and regulated sphere of economic activity where Finnish companies were largely protected from international competition. Moreover, the trade took place in a very unique setting – no other capitalist country had equivalent long-term, extensive and institutionalised economic interaction with the socialist superpower.Footnote 70 By the mid-1980s, however, the sinking oil prices had provoked significant trade deficits and exports from the Soviet Union dramatically declined. In January 1986 the Minister for Foreign Trade, Jermu Laine, warned Finnish companies that they should not rely too heavily on trade with the Eastern Bloc.Footnote 71
In the discussion of Eureka membership, the darkening prospects of trade with the USSR were not directly evoked. But this silence falls within the traditional discretion toward the Soviet UnionFootnote 72 and cannot be taken to indicate that the striking contrast between the vital and rapidly integrating Western European markets and the declining business opportunities in the East went unnoticed by the Finns promoting Eureka. Moreover, the growing difference between performance in the East and the West was not only marked in terms of trade. ‘It is not the fault of the West if Western projects represented higher technology than the Eastern ones’, Prime Minister Kalevi Sorsa is reported to have said.Footnote 73
In Western Europe the political discussions on Eureka were mostly conducted as if the Soviet Union and the Cold War divide did not exist. Instead of looming in the communist East, the challenge to Europe was pictured as coming from either America or Japan. Clearly, high-tech competition took place between the capitalist countries that formed a dynamic ‘triad world’, an increasingly interconnected space of trade and knowledge transfer, while the communist system gradually disappeared from the picture.Footnote 74 Stephen G. Brooks and William C. Wohlforth have listed three shifts in the structure of global production that had a particular impact on the international relations in the last years of the Cold War: the upswing in the number and importance of interfirm alliances, the increased geographic dispersion of production and the growing opportunity cost of being isolated from foreign direct investment. All of them were related to fundamental technological changes and the accentuation of the role of R&D in industrial production. Whereas Western multinational companies were quick to assume new global business strategies, thereby ‘increasing their opportunities for technological innovation and reducing the risks and difficulty associated with R&D through a greatly expanding web of international interfirm alliances during the 1980s, the Soviets were completely isolated from this trend.’ In fact, ‘“globalization” was not global: It took sides in the Cold War.’Footnote 75
While it was clear that for high technology and dynamic export markets the Finns would have to head towards the West, in 1985 political changes in the Soviet Union had no major impact on Finnish European policy. Mikhail Gorbachev came to power in March, but signals of the coming policy reform in Moscow were still weak.Footnote 76 Furthermore, there is no direct evidence that the Kremlin's growing distraction from Finland's affairs, due to the new internal and external troubles of the USSR,Footnote 77 would have determined the political choices in Helsinki. Moscow's initial silence on the issue might have encouraged the government to press on, but during the intense days preceding France's invitation the Soviet stance was never seriously discussed. Archival documents consulted for this study show no concern over the Kremlin's possible disapproval of flirting with this brand-new Western scheme.
Before the Paris inaugural conference, in the diplomatic exchanges between the Soviet Union and Finland, Eureka was mentioned only once. This was on 9 July, when, during his meeting with President Koivisto, the Soviet Ambassador to Finland, Vladimir Sobolev, briefly addressed the issue. But instead of expressing any specific views on the French initiative, Sobolev just assumed that Finland would probably be invited and supposed that possibly even the Soviet Union could later collaborate with Eureka countries.Footnote 78 This was followed by a long silence. In September Koivisto sent a letter to Gorbachev where he explained the Finnish interest in Eureka: ‘Because the proclaimed purpose of this Eureka project is the development and application of civilian high technology, we too expressed our willingness to participate in the development and realisation of the plan. We consider that this objective continues to be in harmony with our foreign policy line as well as our aspiration for peace.’ Clearly, the president's aim was to reassure the Soviets. ‘Should the events evolve in another direction’, he promised, ‘the Finnish government will draw its own conclusions’.Footnote 79
But Koivisto's letter did not have the desired effect. In the subsequent exchanges between the Finnish foreign ministry staff and Soviet diplomats, the Soviet tone was different and contained a clear reprimand: the Kremlin was unhappy that the Finns had not informed Moscow about their plans to participate in Eureka and ESA.Footnote 80 Discontent was expressed in various meetings, both in Helsinki and Moscow.Footnote 81 In November the Finns were reminded of the political nature of Eureka and directly asked how comfortable they felt in such a framework.Footnote 82 The Soviets also demanded copies of the Eureka membership agreementFootnote 83 and requested consultations on the issue.Footnote 84
Finnish politicians did their best to alleviate Soviet fears and prove that the decision to join Eureka had not changed the country's foreign policy in any substantial way. Koivisto underlined the stability of Finnish policy towards both the USSR and Western Europe, while Foreign Minister Väyrynen argued that the coincidental timing of some new European initiatives could by no means be interpreted as a policy change.Footnote 85 Prime Minister Sorsa and Minister for Foreign Trade Laine also gave statements highlighting the stability of foreign policy.Footnote 86 The consultations that the Soviet Union requested were nevertheless organised in the context of the Finnish−Soviet trade talks in Helsinki on 3 December 1985. On that occasion, the Finnish delegation, composed of officials from the foreign ministry, emphasised the civilian, complementary and intergovernmental character of Eureka, as well as its focus on cooperation in individual projects in which participation would be optional. The Soviet representatives, led by Deputy Minister for Foreign Trade A. N. Manzhulo, remained sceptical and reiterated their doubts about the true nature of the programme. From their point of view Eureka included more than just technological aspects and was intended to produce technology that would be subjected to Western embargo rules.Footnote 87 The Soviets were not satisfied even though the Finns promised to refrain from all military research, if such would be undertaken in Eureka, and assured the Soviet Union that they would be kept informed about Finnish plans in the future.Footnote 88
It is fair to say that the Soviet doubts about Eureka were not totally groundless. First of all, for a long time the exact content of the initiative remained largely open. Even after the Paris inaugural conference in July 1985 the outlines of the initiative were anything but clear. It was commonly known that Eureka would be an intergovernmental arrangement fostering Western European cooperation in high technology and that it would be realised outside the structures of the European Community and focus on ‘near-market’ research. The initiative for projects was to be given to firms and research institutes instead of national governments, and the administration would be light. But this was pretty much all. The communiqué of the meeting remained very brief and vague, the only clear provision being that Eureka would have no central funds.Footnote 89
Second, it was not immediately obvious that the French initiative would be limited to civilian technology. Even though President Mitterrand publicly denied the rumours of him wanting to create Eureka as a European response to the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI, launched by President Ronald Reagan in 1983), his proposal was widely associated with the American programme.Footnote 90 The French openly disliked Reagan's project, and there is no doubt that the Star Wars programme served as an important impulse for the Élysée.Footnote 91 It is also noteworthy that some research activities included in Eureka, such as lasers, telecommunications and new materials, have potential military applications and also occupied a central place in the US enterprise. No wonder, therefore, that two major French defence industry companies, Matra and Aerospatiale, were active on the matter from the beginning. Furthermore, in France the option of creating a defence system similar to the SDI was actually discussed, although the plans were kept secret due to the (probably correct) assumption that Eureka could not be sold to the other Western European governments as a military programme and as an obvious rival to the American initiative.Footnote 92 In May 1985 the French also proposed to West Germany the creation of a European surveillance satellite network as part of the European defence system – and in the context of Eureka.Footnote 93 In addition, the possible military dimension of Eureka was explicitly mentioned in Foreign Minister Dumas’ letters to the EC capitals before Mitterrand's first public announcement on Eureka.Footnote 94
Military considerations might also explain why Eureka was defined and represented as an exclusively Western European project. Already before the Paris conference, German Foreign Minister Genscher rejected the idea of Eastern European participation and said that technological cooperation between the East and the West would continue to be pursued exclusively within the Conference for Security and Co-operation in Europe (CSCE). When the Hungarian government enquired about the possibility of participating in Eureka projects, the message from the French foreign ministry was straightforward: since the programme might involve military applications, the countries of the Warsaw Pact were not welcome.Footnote 95
There is no doubt that the Finnish decision makers knew about these sensitive dimensions of Eureka but were careful not to highlight them. Indeed, they systematically pictured the enterprise as a purely technical or economic – and thereby politically innocent – venture. Prime Minister Kalevi Sorsa, for example, announced that ‘also in that situation Finland is only protecting its legitimate economic interests’.Footnote 96 Here he followed a traditional rhetorical strategy of separating economic integration from political integration, aiming to make Western overtures more acceptable to the Soviets.Footnote 97
The Finnish government also remained true to another key component of the country's integration strategy in the Cold War era, namely the principle of parallelism – balancing steps towards deeper integration with the West by similar arrangements with the Soviet Union.Footnote 98 Finland counterbalanced the Eureka and ESA memberships by increasing TT cooperation with the Soviet Union. At the anniversary meeting of the TT treaty in September 1985, the two countries agreed on a number of new joint projects.Footnote 99
But in the larger picture, these assurances and ex-post fixes did not change the fact that, with Eureka, Finland acted in a strikingly independent and proactive way and entered a highly politicised project with a possible military dimension. This cannot be explained by Moscow's initial silence alone. The Finnish government did not consult the Soviet Union before starting its fierce diplomatic campaign aimed at securing a seat at the Élysée dinner table. Moreover, the subsequent Soviet reaction did not really bother the officials involved in the process. Access to the Eureka meeting had become such a compelling political imperative that its implications for Finnish−Soviet relations were hardly considered.Footnote 100 Furthermore, when the Soviet complaints came, they were received with determination: Finland was not planning to quit Eureka. The Soviets were left with no other choice but to live with the uncomfortable fact that Finland had become a full member of President Mitterrand's exclusive high-tech club. This was unforeseen in a country where policy makers normally anticipated Moscow's every move.Footnote 101
Research on Finnish foreign policy on the eve of the Cold War's end has highlighted the conservative attitudes of the Finnish top decision makers, in particular President Mauno Koivisto. First elected in 1982, Koivisto was wary of making a radical break with his predecessor's foreign policy, emphasising neutrality, autonomy and good and confidential relations with the Soviet Union.Footnote 102 Overall, the foreign policy elite was slow to react to changes in Europe and in many respects remained stuck in established patterns of thinking and acting.Footnote 103 In official statements, membership in the EC was strictly excluded until 1991.Footnote 104 When membership in the Council of Europe came on to the political agenda, Soviet warnings about its negative consequences were taken literally and the accession was postponed until 1989.Footnote 105 The government also followed a cautious line with the European Economic Area (EEA, initiated in 1989 and realised in 1994) that was meant to be a more comprehensive framework for cooperation between EFTA and the EC. When Austria and Sweden filed their EC membership applications in 1989 and 1991, respectively, the Finnish government stayed firmly committed to EEA, stating that it had no other political goals as regards to European integration.Footnote 106 The president also made sure that the Soviet Union was well informed early on.Footnote 107 It is thus no wonder that for some commentators Finnish policy towards European integration appeared unclear if not contradictory. Analysing the situation in early 1989, the French delegation in Helsinki noted that: ‘convinced of the necessity of deepening the cooperation with the Twelve [EC members], afraid of being marginalised in EFTA, but also willing to preserve good and friendly relations with Moscow. . .Finland has clearly not yet defined the positions adapted to such ambitions’. This indecisiveness, the French predicted, could lead to a situation where Finland was isolated or subject to circumstances over which it had no control.Footnote 108
But the situation was not as immutable as it might have seemed. Attitudes gradually softened as Finns became more familiar with European institutions. In 1988 the government's report to the parliament on ‘Finland's stance on the economic integration of Western Europe’ already noted that ‘Finland's aim is to exert as close a cooperation as possible with the [European] Communities in order to safeguard her interests in the ongoing process of Western European integration’.Footnote 109 When Jacques Delors, the president of the European Commission, visited Helsinki that summer, he received a statesman-like reception.Footnote 110 On that occasion, Prime Minister Holkeri not only invited the EC to open a representation in Helsinki to ease communication with BrusselsFootnote 111 but also ventured to describe the changing atmosphere in the country:
Also here in Finland, there is a discussion on integration and its impacts on Finland. . . . True to our national habit, the discussion started carefully and sceptically, but it is now getting new dimensions. Now we are analysing the relation of our Europeanness to what is happening elsewhere in Europe.Footnote 112
In particular, the EEA negotiations, which involved a large number of various Finnish interests, transformed the country's relationship to European integration. In fact, the EEA brought Finland intriguingly close to the EC: allowing access to the Community's internal market and initiating broad cooperation in several other policy sectors, the treaty came halfway to actual EC membership.Footnote 113
Moreover, the remaining elements of consensus and continuity could barely hide the increasing discontent of internationalising elite actors with the official policy line. While reluctant to openly confront the government, Finnish business leaders understood that succeeding in global economic competition required improved access to Western European markets.Footnote 114 Eureka was in the interest of a Finnish industry that was exporting to Western markets and more and more convinced of the advantages of investing in R&D. One of the interests advocating for Eureka was the Confederation of Finnish Industries (Teollisuuden Keskusliitto, TKL), whose Managing Director Timo Relander publicly announced that staying outside this cooperation would be an ‘impossible option’.Footnote 115 The confederation's position could hardly be ignored: the president of the TKL (1985–1987) and CEO of the Nokia Corporation (1977–1988), Kari Kairamo, was known not only for his efforts to increase R&D cooperation with the West but also for his direct contacts with the government. In addition, Kairamo was a member of the European Government and Business Relations Council and had vast international networks including Per Gyllenhammer, the influential CEO of Volvo and the founder of the European Roundtable of Industrialists, which became a powerful lobby for EC industrial policy.Footnote 116 According to Martti Häikiö, for both Finnish industry and Nokia, the crucial year was 1985, when ‘eyes turned from the East to the West’.Footnote 117
Perhaps even more than the internationalised business elite, however, Eureka was a political venture of the Western-oriented civil servants within the Finnish foreign ministry. In fact, the success of the enterprise strengthened the position of pro-European officials within the ministry. By the end of the decade, this particular group had become influential in the formulation of Finland's integration policy.Footnote 118 One of Eureka's legacies, in other words, was institutional and mental; the political breakthrough generated the confidence necessary for subsequent European overtures.
Yet Eureka was far from being only an elite project. Remarkably, it was quickly embraced across the political spectrum. Eureka membership was favourably greeted in the parliament as well as in the Finnish media, while dissenting voices remained rare and came primarily from the far left.Footnote 119 Indeed, the public pressure was such that Ambassador Sunell, in his encounters with the French administration, even used it as an argument for Finland's participation.Footnote 120 Compared with the divisive discussion on the free trade agreement with the EC in the early 1970s, and the heated debate on the EU membership in the early 1990s,Footnote 121 this was very different. An enterprise of clearly more limited substance, Eureka became an emotional issue that acquired political significance beyond its actual scope. It touched a sensitive nerve in a Finland looking for recognition as a technologically advanced Western European country.
Eureka was not the only West European organisation that the Finnish government rather autonomously joined against Moscow's wishes. The Soviet leadership criticised Finnish membership in the OECD in 1969, its full membership in EFTA in 1986, as well as its associate membership in the European Space Agency, ESA, in 1987. All these overtures, however, differ from the Eureka case in some important respects. Joining the OECD was a result of thorough consideration and followed twelve years of Finnish presence in the organisation as observer.Footnote 122 Even as members, the Finns kept a low profile and followed a policy that French officials described as one of ‘great discretion’.Footnote 123 As for EFTA, the possibility of full membership had been on the table for a good while. An associate member since 1961, Finland was heavily involved in the organisation, and over the years the difference between associate membership and actual membership had practically disappeared. In both cases the Finnish president informed Moscow, although official consultations were not organised in advance.Footnote 124 In 1984 Finland applied for status as an associate member in ESA.Footnote 125 There are indeed striking similarities between the Finnish ventures with ESA and Eureka: each time, the Finns were first blocked, and each time (although with some delay, in particular with ESA), the government showed considerable determination to secure participation. But the battle over ESA went on much longer, attracted far less public attention and caused only minor diplomatic hassle. Compared to Eureka, there was much less uncertainty and political turbulence. As a new, vaguely defined initiative, Eureka involved more imminent political risk than any other European organisation the Finnish government had thus far ventured to approach.
In autumn 1985 the largest daily newspaper, Helsingin Sanomat, wrote that if official foreign policy had not changed, then at least the atmosphere in the country had: ‘Officials responsible for Soviet relations and Soviet trade who during President Kekkonen's term [1956–1981] enjoyed high respect, increasingly feel overshadowed by EFTA, EC, Eureka and ESA experts. The Eastern trade and technological cooperation in that direction are no longer seen to be as attractive as in the past.’Footnote 126 After 1985 similar observations of ‘Westernisation’ became more and more frequent, and, towards the end of the decade, the contradiction between the government's official statements and divergent opinions, expressed either behind-the-scenes or, increasingly, in the national media, became impossible to ignore.Footnote 127 This tension finally disappeared between autumn 1991 and spring 1992, when the government turned to support EC/EU membership. In March 1992, following the signing of the Maastricht Treaty, the collapse of the Soviet Union, deepening economic recession and the decision of two other European neutral countries, Sweden and Austria, to join the Community, Finland filed its application.Footnote 128 This rapid shift only becomes fully understandable when examined in the context of the incremental, undercurrent changes, which occurred from the mid-1980s, and of which Eureka membership was an essential element.
Conclusion
Eureka was not the first attempt of the Finnish government to stay on board in the process of Western European integration. Earlier efforts to approach the West, however, largely fell within the Cold War tradition of Finnish integration policy, which has been described as one of ‘wait and see’. According to Harto Hakovirta, the ‘waiting’ component entailed four basic elements: first, the Finns postponed their decision on participation until the situation had been settled and a new system stabilised. Second, they bided their time while the nature of integration changed in such a way that participation was easier to reconcile with their policies. Third, the Finns characteristically waited until the international environment became more favourable to their action. And fourth, the Finns usually refrained from decisions before the position of the Soviet Union was clear. The component of ‘seeing’, on the other hand, consisted of active and planned information gathering.Footnote 129
In the case of Eureka membership, almost none of the characteristics of the traditional ‘wait and see’ policy seemed to apply: first, the Finnish government did not wait for the settling of the situation and the stabilisation of the new system, but hastily joined an institution whose future form remained undetermined. Second, the Finns did not hold back until the nature of integration evolved and became easier to adjust to their policies. Instead, they accepted the common timetable set by the other Eureka countries and requested no special terms for membership. Third, there was no intention to wait for a change in the international environment. In summer 1985 there was still a deep sense of Soviet aggression in Western Europe and general uncertainty about the ideas of the Kremlin's new leader. For Moscow, Western European integration, and especially the EC, remained an evil: only in 1988 did the Soviets finally abandon their non-recognition policy toward the Community and signed a cooperation agreement with the long resented trade bloc.Footnote 130 Fourth, in the rush to join Eureka, Moscow's position mattered surprisingly little. This came with consequences, but far less so than one could perhaps have expected. It should also be pointed out that Eureka was exclusive in its membership requirement and, despite all the assurances to the contrary, could hardly be described as a purely non-political enterprise. In the past Finland had not approached forums like this, and certainly not without thorough prior soundings and careful consideration.
Throughout the Cold War period, Finland's integration policy had been a cumulative process that, in Esko Antola's words, had ‘gradually made Finland a part of the Western European economic system to the extent that in all practical terms Finland has no other options than to try to accommodate herself to the new situation’.Footnote 131 With the acceleration of Western European integration in the mid-1980s, this interdependency reached a new level. Consequently, Finland's reservations with regard to Western European integration were significantly relaxed. No longer was Finland willing to limit its policy to safeguarding its most vital export interests; the Finns were now interested in broader benefits of integration.Footnote 132 This is not to say that all previous reservations disappeared overnight. Even after 1985 some overtures towards the West, and in particular the EC, were hesitant. But the unique spontaneity of Eureka membership indicted an incremental change in the priorities of key decision makers.
It is not a coincidence that new waters were tested with a vehicle that carried the label of high technology: as this article has shown, in the mid-1980s R&D became one of the priority areas of the Finnish government. It also became a major factor in international power relations, where the Soviet Union found itself in an increasingly disadvantaged position. All this affected the priority order of Finland's foreign policy, in which concerns of economic advantage now challenged the traditional imperatives of security policy. Ultimately, Eureka was a means to become anchored to the emergent ‘geographically all-inclusive Western European economic and technological community with the EC as its core’,Footnote 133 and in this way to respond to the international economic and technological pressures that increasingly interfered with the bipolar Cold War logic.
The 1980s changed the world, but Eureka never became the spearhead of the new and fabulous high-tech Europe of which President Mitterrand had been dreaming. Very soon, the politics of its flamboyant and ambiguous launch gave way to routine-like running of various projects, which nevertheless attracted a number of leading European companies.Footnote 134 Gorbachev's new policies in the Soviet Union gradually eased the international atmosphere and dispelled the speculations of Eureka as a counter programme to the SDI. In spring 1987 the political environment had altered to the extent that even the Soviets actively enquired about the possibility of joining Eureka.Footnote 135 A year later, Mitterrand, when meeting Gorbachev during his visit to Moscow, offered him the opportunity to participate in Eureka projects.Footnote 136
Ultimately, Eureka failed to fulfil the airy promises initially attached to the initiative.Footnote 137 Paradoxically perhaps, by the 1990s the EC/EU programmes that Eureka had been designed to challenge already formed the nucleus of European technological cooperation. The EU has initiated overlapping activities, which indicates a possible merger between the Eureka and EU programmes in the future.Footnote 138 Nevertheless, rather than just a disappointing initiative, Eureka should be understood as one of the many competing visions for the European future in uncertain times of change. As a determined response to the accentuated importance of R&D in international relations, its creation was an important sign of global and European transition. For Finland, Eureka had a particular significance through the emotional battle for membership, which signalled a larger policy revision aimed at adapting to the emerging world order.
