How Finland Links Defence, Growth, and EU Enlargement: Notes from Europe Forum Turku 2026

Dr. Anselm Küsters, LL.M.

The train journey from Helsinki to Turku takes around two hours. Throughout the year, it regularly carries tourists to attractions such as the city’s castle and the Sibelius Museum. In the last week of August, however, it carries EU practitioners to Turku’s Europe Forum. This year marked the ninth annual event, which cep’s new Finnish network hub, cep Nordic Countries, was able to attend for the first time. The three-day programme took place at Turku City Theatre under the motto “Values, Innovation and Security as the Foundation for the EU’s Success”.

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Anyone counting the sessions would conclude that security was the main topic. Prime Minister Petteri Orpo opened the event by setting out three priorities for EU policy, each underpinned by the same rationale: enlargement as the most effective security policy available; faster decision-making through qualified majority voting, advocated for practical rather than ideological reasons; and removing the remaining barriers to the single market in services, energy and capital, as these weaken the Union’s defence capabilities. Significantly, he suggested that the funding of defence on the eastern flank should also be the responsibility of the European Union rather than only individual states.

The following conference report does not aim to summarise the programme in its entirety, which featured dozens of parallel sessions delivered in Finnish, Swedish, and English. It also omits the interesting topics of maritime policy, health, and social affairs (more on the Finnish maritime industry, particularly its icebreakers, will be covered in a future essay for “Common Ground of Europe”). Instead, I would like to share a key observation that I made during my three-day stay in Turku: Notably, almost every economic argument with which we are familiar from the typical Brussels discourse was cloaked in security rhetoric in one way or another here – let us call it “flank realism”. Can the rest of Europe learn from this mental model?

Common Ground of Europe: How Finland Links Defence, Growth, and EU Enlargement: Notes from Europe Forum Turku 2026