Alexander Stubb

“"Joint statement on behalf of the Nordic states by President of the Republic of Finland Alexander Stubb at the UN Security Council session on Ukraine at the United Nations General Assembly in New York on 23 September 2025" President of the Republic of Finland (September 24, 2025)”

“We’re in a mess but we should put things into perspective: The EU is constant crisis management. You move from one crisis to the other and, at the end of the day, it’s just a question of the size of the crisis and who gets hit the hardest. I have always believed the EU advances in three-phases: Phase no. 1 is crisis, phase no. 2 is chaos and phase no. 3 is sub-optimal solution, and that’s very much the nature of the beast.”

“Call me the “stan” man. Or have you ever been to Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Kirghizia or Kazakhstan. Give it eight weeks and I will have done them all.”

“I had always regarded language as more a question of utility than identity. Therefore, I promptly noted that all the (EU) meetings should be conducted in English and French. My older colleagues laughed. Later I understood why. On the second day of the Finnish presidency (of the EU) a German delegation refused to participate in an informal ministerial meeting because no German interpretation had been arranged.”