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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