Earlier this month, Sweden’s leading industrialist Jacob Wallenberg and other Swedish and Finnish business executives met the security and foreign policy elite of the two countries in Helsinki including both military commanders and Finland’s president.
The timing for the meeting is striking. Both countries will decide in the coming weeks whether to change decades of security policy in northern Europe and join Nato. Everything points to Finland taking the plunge to apply for membership of the western military alliance and, while the outcome is less certain for Sweden, most experts expect Stockholm to follow Helsinki’s lead.
Applying to join Nato would not only upend decades of security thinking in the once neutral countries, but it would also subtly change the business environment. Just as in the broader debate on the military alliance, Finland appears to be taking the lead. Many Finnish companies have been advocating Nato membership for years, arguing this would firmly show their country’s proper place in the west.