Our visit to the Confederation of Finnish Industries Brussels office on 2nd of November 2017.
On Thursday 2.11, we visited the office of Confederation of Finnish Industries (CFI) in Brussels.
For those who do not know what CFI is: It is an organization that aims to improve and monitor the benefits and services of Finnish industries in Finland, in the European Union and on international forums. CFI works on lobbying and making Finland an attractive as a business environment. CFI has an office in the heart of EU, Brussels, but CFI’s headquarters are in Helsinki, Finland.
CFI welcomed our group in a traditional Finnish way by offering our group coffee. The two Finnish senior advisors from CFI, Salla Ahonen and Ilari Kallio, gave us a 1,5 hour presentation about what CFI actually does in Finland and in Brussels. Salla and Ilari seemed to be very passionate about their work and as they said themselves, they could have continued the discussion about CFI forever.
Towards the end, some members of our group made some interesting questions and we got to discuss different topics with Salla and Ilari. Like in all visits during our Brussels trip, Brexit was discussed, as it is now a very much a current issue everywhere in the EU.
The impression of CFI was good: professional and well-functioning. Although the job seems to be very demanding, Salla and Ilari seemed to enjoy their work very much.
All in all the visit was educational, and it was very nice to see the issues that EU deals with in Brussels from a Finnish perspective.
Kimmo Kokkonen and Helmi Uotila