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The President of the Republic at the Lunch Hosted by the City of Helsinki on November 20, 2001
20.11.2001


Dear Chairman of the Helsinki City Council!
Dear Mayor of Helsinki!
Ladies and Gentlemen!

In Europe, there are no other two capitals situated so close together as Helsinki and Tallinn. Of course, I mean not only kilometres, I am thinking of contacts between people. Our capitals are a very good expression of the co-operation and future trends between our countries. Helsinki and Tallinn are related cities, and their inhabitants have close personal and professional ties. The people of Helsinki know Tallinn and Tallinners know Helsinki. The relations between our two countries are developing in the same direction. Finland is more and more familiar to us, and more and more Finns discover Estonia. The disappearing of the Schengen border will bring our two peoples even closer.

When trying to define the current state of Estonian-Finnish relations, we would get into difficulties, because even the communication between Tallinn and Helsinki is so lively and multifarious that it would be difficult to provide an adequate description.

Spiritual co-operation between our capitals is not only to be recommended, it is the reality of today. Estonians go to libraries in Helsinki and buy books from the Academic Bookshop. Estonian children are discovering the world at the Heureka research centre. The Finns, on the other hand, are frequent visitors at our National Opera, the Estonia Theatre. Thus, the two cities have close contacts. For Estonians, Helsinki was a door to Europe for a long time. It could be said that until recent years, we communicated with the whole world through Helsinki.

Estonia and Finland, and thus also Tallinn and Helsinki, are situated in one of the fastest developing regions of Europe and have a considerable development potential. It is natural that the implementation of co-operation and joint projects helps us to introduce our region to the world, and to attract investments; it is a co-operation that exceeds the geographical dimension. For some years now, the EUREGIO co-operation programme has been ongoing between Helsinki and Tallinn, with the aim to take advantage of the regions potential and thus also to promote its development. Co-operation in the field of education, science, and environment protection, with the analysis of the dynamics of the similarities and differences of the two regions, is the aim of our co-operation.

The purity of the waters of the Gulf of Finland is our common care. We all know that behind Suomenlinna, the water is so clean that salmon nets can be cast there. Also this indicates the importance of co-operation in the name of sustainable and environmentally friendly Baltic Sea.

Dear friends!

I am glad that tonight, I will be visiting the Helsinki City Theatre, where the performances of "The Bridge" of the Tallinn City Theatre were played for full house several times in October, and where we can see the exhibition of costumes and photos from the Tallinn City Theatre. To end my speech, I would like to remind you that on November 21, 1927, Wäinö Sola staged Oskar Merikanto's "Elina's Death" at the Estonia Theatre, and that this was the first Finnish opera staged in Estonia. And also, I would like to recall once more the great Estonian actress Liina Reimann, of who spent half of her acting life in Helsinki; and Aino Kallas, whose ties to Estonia were so strong that she almost became an Estonian. Professor Kai Laitinen has written that Aino Kallas had chosen her last apartment so that she could see the coastline of Estonia from her windows.

I raise my glass to toast the City of Helsinki.


In Finnish:
Tasavallan presidentti Arnold Rüütel Helsingin kaupungin tarjoamalla lounaalla 20. marraskuuta 2001


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