Presentation – “From Cold War neutrality to EU pragmatism: Finland, non-alignment and the politics of crisis management in the 1996 Intergovernmental Conference”

The Cold War Research Network is pleased to announce a book presentation at Leiden University in which Topi Juga will be speaking in the Cold War Research Network’s session on Finland’s post-Cold War security policy, focusing on the country’s accession to the European Union alongside its decision to remain militarily non-aligned. The talk examines this period through the lens of Finnish pragmatism: by engaging constructively across a wide range of policy areas, Finland built a reputation as a proactive actor, one it could draw on to propose fitting ways forward in a European context, even in its most sensitive policy area, security and defense.

The presentation draws partly on a draft chapter from Juga’s doctoral dissertation, which uses newly opened archival sources to examine Finland’s position in the 1996 Intergovernmental Conference negotiations on the Common Foreign and Security Policy and the future EU–WEU–NATO relationship. Finland was determined not to be seen as a member state obstructing discussion of, or possible progress towards, a common European foreign and security policy, while its fundamental security interest in military non-alignment set clear limits on how far it could go. Finland’s prominent push to bring crisis management into the EU’s competences illustrates this pragmatic balancing act, allowing Finland to appear as a constructive contributor to European security cooperation while steering the negotiations away from more immediate and far-reaching steps towards defence integration. The case illustrates the analytical complexity behind a member state’s position-forming on questions of security policy that lie at the core of national sovereignty, a complexity that remains relevant to today’s debates on Europe’s security and defence.

About the speaker: Topi Juga is a doctoral researcher in Political History at the University of Helsinki. His dissertation focuses on post-Cold War European integration and the formation of Finland’s EU policy during the country’s early membership years (1995–1999). He currently works at the Finnish Institute of International Affairs as a Research Fellow in the European Union and Strategic Competition research programme, where he focuses on the War Economy 2030 project, analysing states’ capacity to mobilise their war economies at a broader societal level, encompassing socioeconomic endurance and economic security.

Juga has previously worked on EU institutional issues and EU decision-making as a civil servant at the Government EU Affairs Department of the Prime Minister’s Office of Finland, and as a political advisor at the European Parliament in Brussels. He has also lived in Germany, where, alongside his doctoral research, he wrote articles on EU policy and Germany for the leading Finnish weekly magazine Suomen Kuvalehti. Juga has also completed the Europaeum Scholars’ Programme, a two-year policy and leadership course for thirty doctoral candidates from the Europaeum University Network.