As a consequence of membership of the European Union, Finland's international position has strengthened. Our foreign-policy agenda has lengthened and positions have to be adopted on new matters. Membership has been a big challenge in the administrative sense.

We wish to develop the Union in order to strengthen stability and welfare in our continent. This presupposes the development of the Union's capability to act and the creation of a framework facilitating enlargement. The inter-governmental conference that began this year is intended to deal specifically with these challenges.

It is important that the member countries participate with full authority in discourse relating to every sphere of the Union's activities and together determine its goals. That will not lessen the Union's efficiency; on the contrary, it will strengthen it. What is at issue is the common interests of the European countries and their shared future.

Another aim at the inter-governmental conference is to strengthen the Union's capacity for external action - especially its ability to prevent and manage serious conflicts.

Although we see the common foreign and security policy as a matter for cooperation between governments, we are also prepared to put decision-making in this sphere on a more efficient footing. Greater use of qualified-majority voting may be appropriate in reaching decisions in certain areas. It is easy for a small member country to understand the importance of functioning cooperation.

In any event, what matters most is that the member countries have the political will to work together. Not even the most capable institutions can make the common foreign and security policy function more effectively unless there is a willingness to use them.

I have emphasised in various connections that the greater the interdependence between the different parts of the international community, the more peaceful that community will be. Free trade and improving, globally, the conditions that encourage it will promote this development.

So far this year, I have had the opportunity to visit both the Gulf region, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates, and China. Those visits made me even more convinced that Europe must beware of introversion.

The fruits of international cooperation are now being garnered in Bosnia, where IFOR has become an example of a new kind of security cooperation. I sincerely hope that the solution that has emerged will lead to a lasting peace in the whole Balkan region.

We are facing new challenges, as the nuclear safety debate in recent weeks has shown. Likewise, the world's food supply is not built on a sustainable basis. Indeed, the World Food Summit in the autumn will be one of the most important international meetings this year.

Finland is just emerging from a long winter with an abundance of snow, but one that was not unduly cold. The best winter memories of childhood returned to the minds of older generations.

I hope that at least those of you who have spent the past few months here in Finland will have pleasant memories of a genuine Finnish winter.

The spring is a time of new hope. That is what we also need today in the international community.

On behalf of myself and of my spouse, may I propose a toast to the diplomatic corps accredited in Helsinki.