Ålands Framtids mr Rolf Granlund's speech at "Independence in Europe: Equality of Nations in the 21st Century: EFA Conference in European Parliament" 17/11/2010. EFA invites EU President Van Rompuy to come and meet Pro-European Nationalists. Welcome Speech by Jill EVANS - President of EFA Group and Plaid Cymru MEP.

Mrs chairman

My name is Rolf Granlund and I am the deputy chairman of the Aland Future and a vice president of EFA.

My party's outmost goal is independence for Aland. When we started our journey towards independence we felt very lonely on the planet. But thanks to the work of EFA, the parliamentary group and the CMC we get encouragement and re-enforcement to go for independence.

I will now tell you how the political landscape on Aland has changed in quite a short time and more exactly since we entered the arena.

To give you an insight in our situation I'll give a little flashback on our history.

When the League of Nations decided to give Finland the sovereignty over Aland in 1921, the decision included some conditions in order to guarantee the population of Aland its Swedish language, culture and local customs.

During ninety years of autonomy it has become clear that Finland neither can nor will keep its promises to Aland. According to the law Finland has two official, equal languages - Swedish and Finnish. Finnish has become more and more dominant, a natural development since the vast majority in Finland has Finnish as their mother tongue.

It has also become more and more difficult generally to cope in Swedish, be it regarding commerce, higher education, computer programs and more common day things as, for instance, informative labels on goods for sale and so on.

These above-mentioned facts led to the forming and start of the Aland Future, as a political party.

When we decided to race for the general election to the Aland parliament in 2003 we experienced a storm of angriness and ignorant allegations. We were called daydreamers and populists among many other invectives.

We stated that Aland needs independence from Finland to protect our language, our culture and our local customs. And we said that it is because Aland is a part of the Finnish speaking market that we alanders are treated as Finns. We said that Aland need to be an internationally recognised market of its own because of the language situation. We said that we need independence for reforming the premises needed for our business and industrial life as well as for our labour market. And we want to have our own independent foreign policy to be able to negotiate when it comes to our own international treaties.

Of course we had some support from the beginning but none of the political parties in the parliament dared to come forward with us. Anyhow we got 8,3 % of the votes in our first election in 2003 resulting in to two of thirty seats in the parliament. Recent pools give us something between 12-16 % of the votes.

We have recently seen interesting changes in the political rhetoric to day compared to when we started seven years ago. Nowadays the other parties have made a great deal of our politics their own and we have even difficulties from time to time to lead the way.

We have to admit that many things have happened and most of the time according to our predictions, for example the language situation in Finland has been worsening as regards the Swedish language and the economical system has shown its insufficiency and proven that our predictions were not atrocity propaganda. These facts are now obvious to everyone and could as in other situations have been foreseen.

The political climate has, as I said, changed, and has changed substantially. Our work has so to speak been speeding up the insight and progressiveness in the parliament`s work for greater autonomy.

Less than a year ago the Aland parliament appointed a parliamentary committee to come up with a proposal for a new Self-Government act, a new constitution for Aland.

The report the Committee presented - just a couple of weeks ago - contains a proposal for a new self-government system for Aland, but with a constitutional and international legal status.

The members of the Committee suggest the enactment of a new Autonomy Act, with extended self-government in the fields of legislation, administration and public areas of the economy.

The two current comprehensive competence lists for the Aland Parliament and the Finnish Parliament are suggested to be replaced by one list. This list would clearly state the mandate of the Finnish Parliament and include the branches of law related to national sovereignty. The remaining areas would be assigned to the Aland Parliament without being listed in the Autonomy Act following the model according to which the first Autonomy Act (1920) was drafted. The Committee suggests for example explicitly that the Aland Parliament should be able to decide when to take over the competence of the whole taxation area.

To keep the reform process discussion ongoing, the Committee has drafted a text for the next Finnish Government programs and has also presented the text and the underlying reform project to the current parliamentary parties. The Committee suggests that this political process moves forward.

Of course we like to se this political consensus in the Aland parliament as a proof of success for our politics. Even if my party does not think Finland is willing to give us a greater self-determination this time either, we'll support all the efforts from our Parliament and the proposal for this new Constitution.

The national state is aware of the movement towards self-determination and the stronger and the greater support for our ideas we are able to create the faster and more likely our enlargement of self-determination will be achieved.

We in the Aland Future continue our work to make the Aland people realize that independence is a normal and natural thing. And in some recent pools we have had between 12-16 % of the votes. When we ultimately have convinced a majority of the Aland people we'll go for independence.

Brussels 2010-11-17
Rolf Granlund
The Aland Future