Minister for Foreign Affairs Maria Malmer Stenergard and Minister for International Development Cooperation and Foreign Trade Benjamin Dousa met their Finnish counterparts at Swedish-Finnish government meeting

Foreign ministers highlighted support to Ukraine 

During the visit, Sweden’s Minister for Foreign Affairs Maria Malmer Stenergard and her Finnish counterpart Elina Valtonen took part in a panel discussion on Swedish-Finnish cooperation on support to Ukraine. 

“Support to Ukraine is my top priority as Minister for Foreign Affairs, and it is particularly important that we discuss with Finland how best to continue supporting Ukraine,” Ms Malmer Stenergard said during the panel. Ms Valtonen also emphasised the value of Swedish-Finnish cooperation and stated that she was looking forward to ensuring even more in-depth joint efforts.

The panel was moderated by Maud Holma von Heijne, Secretary-General of Folk och Försvar. The other participants were Torbjörn Becker, Director of the Stockholm Institute of Transition Economics, and Katarina Areskoug, former Head of the Representation of the European Commission in Sweden and Swedish representative in the Nordic-Baltic high-level group.

Following the panel discussion, Elly Reinolds, co-founder of OperationAid, presented the organisation’s operations in Ukraine, providing medical care close to the front line and activities for children affected by the war. This year, Sweden has contributed SEK 5 million to its ActiveKids project, which aims to strengthen children and young people and offer them respite, as well as mitigating mental health issues.

Minister for International Development Cooperation and Foreign Trade discussed support to scale-ups 

In connection with the government meeting, a seminar was also held on support to Swedish and Finnish scale-ups, with a focus on financing and internationalisation. Minister for International Development Cooperation and Foreign Trade Benjamin Dousa and his Finnish counterpart Ville Tavio were the hosts. Along with businesses, investors and organisations, they discussed how Sweden and Finland can create the best conditions for scale-ups to grow.

“It’s clear that there’s huge engagement among those represented here today. Together we can make a difference. Scale-ups are innovative and knowledge-intensive businesses that, given the right conditions, can have an impact on society and entire sectors. It was inspiring to listen to the solution-oriented discussions, which also resulted in a number of concrete proposals,” says Mr Dousa.

The seminar was organised by the Ministry for Foreign Affairs in cooperation with Business Sweden and Swedish Incubators and Science Parks (SISP), and was held at Epicenter, a creative meeting place for growing companies.