HELSINKI, June 9 (Xinhua) -- Finland did not present a sufficiently transparent picture of the fiscal impacts of joining NATO, particularly the significantly higher indirect costs associated with meeting alliance obligations, the National Audit Office of Finland (NAOF) said on Tuesday.
In a performance audit titled "NATO-related preparation and decision-making," the audit office said the Finnish government estimated at the time of accession that the direct costs of NATO membership would amount to 70 million to 100 million euros (81 million to 116 million U.S. dollars) annually. However, it said indirect costs linked mainly to the implementation of NATO obligations are substantially higher.
According to the NAOF, estimates of the scale of those indirect costs were not presented in any documents during Finland's accession process. Since Finland became a full member of NATO in April 2023, budget proposals and General Government Fiscal Plans have included information on NATO-related costs, but the information has been fragmented and presented inconsistently.
The audit office said that, based on publicly available information, it is difficult to form a comprehensive picture of the level and development of the costs related to Finland's NATO membership, describing the situation as problematic for the transparency of state fiscal management.
The NAOF also found that while the government generally provided sufficient information on NATO-related matters to decision-makers and Parliament, this was not always done proactively or in a timely manner.
The audit office said that as NATO-related spending becomes increasingly integrated into Finland's overall defence budget, separating the alliance's economic impacts from national defence expenditure will become impractical.
It therefore recommended that the Ministry of Defence and the Ministry for Foreign Affairs provide the best available assessments of NATO-related fiscal impacts in key policy and decision-making documents and make such assessments public whenever possible. ■