Hosting a meeting of EU commissioners on Thursday in Helsinki, Prime Minister Petteri Orpo called for ramped up defence capabilities in the EU and Finland, telling a press conference that "Russia will remain a permanent security threat to Europe".
Finland, which shares a 1,340-kilometre (830-mile) border with Russia, has increased spending on its military preparedness after Russia's invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
The Nordic nation dropped decades of military non-alignment and joined military alliance NATO in April 2023.
Currently spending over two percent of its GDP on defence -- in line with NATO goals -- Orpo said it was clear that Finland must "increase its own defence capabilities over the coming years and in the shorter term."
The "growing Russian threat" and declining "US contribution" meant "we will have to raise the level of defence spending in NATO from two per cent to somewhere above two per cent," Orpo said.
Meanwhile, European Commission Vice-President Henna Virkkunen, describing the security situation in the EU as "very poor" noted that "Finland is in the front line when it comes to many of these security threats that we see today", citing recent alleged sabotage of subsea cables suspected as an example of hybrid warfare.
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