Meanwhile, in the Far North

One of the consequences of the eurozone crisis is that media, pundits and market analysts have been forced to become experts of what previously would have been seen as the most obscure political events. Thus, the Finnish local elections now have international significance (although they are still not making any headlines) as they serve as a barometer for the extent to which "Europe" as an election issue can trickle through to the local level. The theory being that the closer the issue gets to citizens, the harder for EU leaders to sell more integration.

An opinion poll for Finnish public broadcaster Yle puts the anti-bailout (True) Finns party at 17.2% - three times higher than in local election in 2008. Compared to 2008, all parties except for the Green party and the (True) Finns party would lose voters.

With a majority of voters from all Finnish parties - apart from the small Swedish People's Party - seemingly opposing more eurozone bailouts, expect Finland to remain assertive. Starting with the rumoured leveraging of the ESM.

They may have the cup...

It's election campaign season in the Netherlands, with Dutch voters due to choose their next government on 12 September. Caretaker Prime Minister Mark Rutte's VVD party has come up with a rather original way of planting the eurozone crisis into domestic political debate.

On 29 June, the party published the following campaign poster on its Facebook page:

The two players on the right - Andrea Pirlo of Italy and Xavi Hernández of Spain - need no introduction. However, the slogan on the left is quite interesting, as it says,

They may have the cup, not our creditworthiness.

The picture also had a short description above, saying,

Italy or Spain will become European football champions [as we mentioned, the post is from 29 June, two days before the Euro 2012 final]. Now they also need to become champions in cutting their budgets, because if we get things our way, there will be no arrangement through which they can benefit from our financial discipline while not putting their own things in order. Please like if you agree!

To date, the VVD post has 864 'Likes'.

As the elections get closer, tough rhetoric on the eurozone crisis, such as this, is likely to become a feature as Dutch politicians bid to 'steal' votes from Geert Wilders' far-right, notoriously anti-euro (and anti-EU), PVV.

Today, Dutch magazine Elsevier also reported that, at last week’s meeting of the ‘Future of Europe’ group, organised by German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle, Dutch Foreign Minister Uri Rosenthal warned that it was not the time to discuss any further transfer of national powers to the EU, especially in areas such as pensions, labour market and social security.

In light of what we have seen, for instance, in Finland ahead of the latest presidential elections, the picture above is another example of how further fiscal integration and eurozone bailouts are now at the forefront of election campaigns in the Triple-A countries.

True Finns continue to rise

Last week, the True Finns announced that it could not participate in a Coalition government that supported the bail-out of Portugal, its opposition to which was a key plank of the party's election manifesto. Announcing the decision, True Finns leader Timo Soini said, "It would have been nice to be part of the government but you cannot betray yourself."

Soini may have passed up on power, but his decision seems to have gone down well with voters. In an opinion poll carried out at the end of last week - when it had already become clear that the True Finns would not join the government due to the Portugal bail-out - the party got 22.4%, beating its election score by over 2% and making it the biggest party for the first time. It is trailed by the National Coalition Party on 20.6%, the Social Democrats on 18.6% and the Centre Party on 14.4%.

At this rate - particularly if the eurozone continues to deteriorate, requiring more bail-outs - Soini could become absolutely lethal in four years' time. It's that tension again, inherent in the eurozone structure - political ambition vs national democracy vs. economics...

On a separate note - irrespective of what we think of the True Finns - there's an interesting contrast here to a certain UK party, which, upon joining a Coalition government as a junior partner dropped from 23% at the election to 18% just over a month later and falling even lower this year.