onsdag 6 oktober 2021

Speech to Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung, 6 october 2021

Dear Friends,

I am very happy to see so many of you here today, my name is Wille Valve and I am a member of parliament and the chairman of the Baltic Sea Parliamentary Committee in the Parliament of Åland.

My first name, Wille, is very easy if you speak German. It is both spelled and translated exactly as the German word ”Wille” and even carries the same meaning – ”Will” in English. Wille is actually the same name as Wilhelm in German and Willem in Dutch. My surname is a bit more confusing for the German thongue , it has two ”Faus” but is pronounced ”Valve”.

Germany is in many ways a model country for me. Maybe it is because I like things that actually work in practice. I have a strong belief that the world can be changed with things that actually work in practice. This is something that I have noticed that many of my German colleagues also value.

In the Baltic Sea Co-operation, the best friend of the Åland Islands is really the German Bundestag Delegation, which consists of very skilled parliamentarians with an extraordinary commitment for the Baltic Sea, for improving the environment, reducing nutrients and supporting sustainable innovation that actually works.

At the Åland Islands, we have a parliament that enacts its own laws. We take great pride in being able to form our own destiny. Åland has been a member of the EU since 1994. When Finland joined the EU, Finland negotiated a VAT exemption for Åland. In Germany, you have a similar agreement for the Island of Heligoland and in s Büsingen in the south of Baden-Württemberg.

This exemption is currently causing a lot of discussion at Åland, it does not quite work in practice. The only purpose of the arrangement in 1994 was to ensure the future of passenger shipping and communications. The drawback of this arrangement is that the local businesses & citizens are suffering from an overbureacratisation of customs procedures – most things tend to get stuck in the customs. I recently received a highly ordinary book as a gift from another parliamentary assembly, Folktinget. This celebration book got stucked in Customs, which is weird by most standards. You should not be surprised if Ålanders suddenly start to show up in Heligoland & Büsingen to study what it’s like to have the same arrangement in Germany, only without the application of Customs rules! It sounds like heaven to me.

Nevertheless, I sincerely hope that we will have a nice evening and that our coming days together might induce some practical things that actually work.

Wo ein Wille ist, da findet sich auch ein Weg, nicht wahr?

Welcome to Åland!

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