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Finnish industry and commerce to combine
New voice for monitoring interests
A new central employers' organization, the Confederation
of Finnish Industries (EK), is being created to represent
all industry and commerce in Finland. The aim in combining
the Employers' Confederation of Service Industries and the
Confederation of Finnish Industry and Employers is to monitor
the interests of industrial and commercial life much more
effectively than at present.
The task of the new central organization is to create a better,
more competitive operating environment for Finnish corporate
and economic activity. The main challenge will be to direct
the social debate and decision-making towards the major questions
of the future, including competition for the location of companies,
investment and a skilled workforce, globalization and the
necessity for companies to expand abroad, as well as the funding
of social security and the welfare services.
The organization will cover all sectors and companies of
all sizes comprehensively. Initially there will be some 15,000
companies, most of them with fewer than 50 employees. The
sectors will represent more than 70 per cent of Finland's
gross domestic product and more than 95 per cent of Finnish
exports. Some 900,000 people will be employed by the member
companies.
The operations of the new organization will start officially
at the beginning of 2005, but in practice in the autumn of
this year. Leif Fagernäs, who will become the Director-General
of the Confederation of Finnish Industry and Employers on
1 June 2004, will also be the Director-General of the new
central organization.
Fagernäs has far-reaching experience in international
posts. Since 1972 he has been employed by the foreign affairs
administration both in Finland and abroad. Between 1997 and
2001 he was Under-Secretary of State for External Economic
Relations and from 2001 he has been Finland's ambassador in
Berlin.
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