Diplomacy|In his book, Tuomi-Nikula, who retired from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in 2018, goes through the twists and turns of his career from the mid-1970s.
President Sauli Niinistö confused the Italian police force in 2014 during his unofficial visit to Rome with his unusual travel wishes, says the former Finnish ambassador to Rome Petri Tuomi-Nikula in his memoir published on Tuesday A different kind of diplomacy.
“The presidential couple’s announcement that they want to get to know the city on a Hop-on Hop-off bus, just like everyone else, was to make the police stop and wonder if everything has to be so impossibly ordinary,” Tuomi-Nikula recalls.
According to Tuomi-Nikula, the presidential couple had also arrived in Italy in tourist class and through an exchange connection, which is not the usual way of arrival for the heads of state of all countries.
His career In his book, Tuomi-Nikula, who worked for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and worked as a journalist, retired as Finland’s ambassador to Hungary in 2018, goes through the twists and turns of his career from the mid-1970s.
The work goes through various twists and turns of the Finnish foreign affairs administration from the point of view of the personnel problems of the Finnish embassy in West Germany, starting with the so-called “Bonn crisis” and ending with the relations between Finland and Hungary as Hungary drifts towards EU policy
In the same context, Tuomi-Nikula also remembers Finnish foreign ministers and presidents.
President Niinistö’s Tuomi-Nikula recalls that he took over the space in foreign policy “more or less fully”.
“Niinistö’s coughs turned into almost uk(kek)kosen’s rumbles at some point. That’s how it sounded to old ears. This was helped by the fact that the four Prime Ministers of his term allowed this to happen, with the exception of [Sanna] Marin’s (sd) from the end of the season, a small friction chick”, Tuomi-Nikula evaluates.
President Tarja Halonen Tuomi-Nikula estimates that he has taken up less space in foreign policy. He recalls that at the beginning of Halonen’s presidency, some of the officials of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs were worried about Halonen’s political positions on human rights.
“They reminded many of the Swedes’ ways of working, and it was assumed that nothing good would come of it.”
However, according to Tuomi-Nikula, the fear turned out to be pointless.
“The best thing about Halonen’s terms as foreign minister and president was the new vision of human rights and the brutal way in which thinking was brought into foreign policy,” writes Tuomi-Nikula.
“The realization of the human rights of sexual and gender minorities is the most important realized human right in Western democracies in general since the Second World War. With Halonen’s help, Finland took a long step towards the rest of Scandinavia,” says Tuomi-Nikula, referring to Halonen’s background as chairman of Seta, the human rights and civil society organization of rainbow people.
In his book Tuomi-Nikula also admits that he denied Halonen’s daughter Anna Halonen hiring as a trainee assistant at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
A long-time former member of parliament and a multiple-time minister Erkki Tuomioja (sd) said in his memoir published in 2022 that President Halonen would not have liked Tuomi-Nikula because of this.
“I didn’t want the newspapers to have a reason to tear up about it in a situation where Halonen was a presidential candidate. Everything we did was under scrutiny, and the hiring of “Nökö” would have been guaranteed to be in the tabloids”, Tuomi-Nikula recalls, referring to Anna Halonee by her nickname.
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