The EU market should be raised to a new value, when Trump is raging and Mercosur is stuck

From the reader. President Donald Trump’s unpredictable behavior weakens Finnish companies’ confidence in the US market. Finnish companies are feverishly looking for new directions.

The Mercosur trade agreement with four Latin American countries, which has been filed for a quarter of a century, is of no help to this crisis. The far-left and far-right of the European Parliament pulled the handbrake together with the Greens by voting for the agreement until the European Court of Justice.

There is hope. It is hoped that the free trade agreement signed with India, characterized as historic, will open a big new market for Finnish exports. But like Kauppalehti evaluates (KL 28.1.2026), the practical applications of the agreement are open – India is known for protectionism, bureaucracy, complex customs system, regulation and a fragmented spectrum of states.

The solution at your feet

While waiting for new markets, companies and decision-makers should notice that a large part of the solution is right at our feet: the European Union. The EU’s internal market is the second largest economic area in the world, about 18 trillion euros in size. It gets forgotten sometimes.

If politicians and companies blow harder together, Finland can get more power out of it. Guidelines can be found in the recommendations of international expert organizations, such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the Organization of Industrialized Countries (OECD) and, for example, the European Central Bank (ECB).

According to the IMF, too much friction is still holding back the movement of services across the borders of EU member states. The regulation is fragmented and there are too many national deviations. The ECB, on the other hand, is pushing for deepening integration through strengthening the capital market. OECD experts see that offering services across borders, deepening capital markets and increasing labor mobility between EU countries would bring economic growth, prosperity and well-being.

Finnish politicians and officials must therefore promote market integration in Brussels much more aggressively than at present, and companies must do their part accordingly. Expansion in Europe should be given a more important role in the strategy of medium-sized companies than at present.

Great potential in France

We should also look elsewhere than the German and Swedish markets of our traditional trading partners. For example, France, the second largest economy in the EU, has great potential. France is one of the world’s leading industrialized countries and today it is actively looking for European partners in the fields of the future.

There are business opportunities in modern France in the fields of defense, security, energy, digital transformation and digital solutions in the health sector. The startup scene, space and Arctic know-how are also trending, as is the low-carbon food economy. For subcontractors, large French companies can open a route to the global market.

Instead of waiting – perhaps in vain – for the rest of the world to come to its senses, Finland can be made bigger with our own European internal market, which operates in a rather exemplary manner based on rules.

Raine Tiessalo

executive director, Ajatuspaja Toivo

board member, French-Finnish Chamber of Commerce