Speech by Matias Ojalehto, President of the the Board of the Regional Regional Assembly 2017-2021, at the Assembly on 4 October 2021
Welcome to the Assembly. Congratulations on the election success. Most of you will be elected Regional Assemblylors. Twelve and a half years ago I sat as a young representative at a similar meeting and now it's safe to retire when you see new faces in the hall. I don't usually give long opening speeches, but now it's been over a year and a half since I've been able to talk live to a larger group of people. A lot can happen in four years. That was the case during the previous Regional Assembly, and it will be the case during the next term. We were sure that the new counties and regional elections would have been held long ago. We were preparing multidisciplinary counties in good speed and in cooperation with good cooperation across party lines, but suddenly a couple of years ago came to a complete halt. Now the regional elections are knocking at the door, but the regional Regional Assemblys will continue to serve as at least from the foundations that are familiar for the time being. The Regional Regional Assembly remains responsible for regional development and spatial planning, such as tasks related to EU funding and regional planning. One of the most important tasks of the region is to act as the voice and guardian of the interests of the municipalities in the region and Northern Finland as a whole in national and EU-level decision-making. We just completed a major advocacy project when Minister of Economic Affairs What Lintilä made his decision regarding the national allocation criteria for structural funds. You cannot be completely satisfied in cooperation with the outcome, even though you can be in absolute euros - however, we do not lose money, which was a threat floating in the air throughout the process. The next major effort will be the investment programme for the fairway network. At the moment, it seems disastrous for Northern Finland. In fact, the actual investment programme does not support the Strategic Transport 12 plan in any way. There would be no major investment for us in the next ten years, in cooperation with the exception of the repair of the Oulu-Kontiomäki railway line. Based on the facts, we would have earned more infrastructure money to the north. There is a tremendous amount of work to be done to change this, and in this context, it is good to think about a strategy for how interest representation will be handled in the region in the future? Has the world changed so much that only in an extremely powerful and confrontational way can lobbying succeed? Policy making has become more superficial and the content is increasingly changing in the direction things look. In the past, the The Regional Regional Assembly has always strived for very factual justifications and proper working methods, but is there a change of strategy to be made here? We have recently heard positive news about the Haapavesi bioenergy plant and …
