EU-oikeuden kielestä legalismiin – Suomen oikeudelliset argumentit ennallistamisasetuksen ja sosiaalisen ilmastorahaston käsittelyssä
Avainsanat:
EU-vaikuttaminen, toimivalta, ympäristönsuojelu, ilmasto, EU, EU:n neuvostoAbstrakti
From the language of EU law to legalism – Finland’s legal argumentation in negotiating the Nature Restoration Law and Social Climate Fund
The EU is traditionally defined as a community based on the rule of law: its powers and their limits are laid down in its founding treaties. In practice, EU competencies have been interpreted creatively in order to avoid the need for formal treaty reform. Some of the recent EU environmental and climate policy measures have engendered exceptional resistance in Finland. Both the government programme and recent reports have emphasised the need to develop Finland’s ability to influence EU legislation so as to advance national interests. The article examines the Social Climate Fund, and the Nature Restoration Regulation adopted during the previous parliamentary term, and where the Finnish negotiation strategy led to opposite conclusions. In practice, this resistance has been closely tied to the costs imposed by EU legislation, but it has been conducted in legal language. Finnish discussion has centred on the wish to define social policy and forestry questions as exclusively national competencies. We describe the legal argumentation used and its impact in EU negotiations. Legal discussion about the limits to EU competence remained largely contained within Finnish discussion. We trace this outcome to how the objective of safeguarding national competence now finds expression in the legal language used in EU institutions, which is geared towards deeper integration.
