The central bank also takes part in the economic policy discussion in Finland, in the role of a non-political expert – hoping to advance the level of the economic policy debate in the country. As central banks are independent, we think that this gives us a niche where we can add value to the policy discussion.
Finland and Belgium are similar countries in some respects: Small EU countries, both members of the euro area, bilingual (in our case, the national languages are Finnish and Swedish), and both have almost exactly the same level of GDP per capita.