Back in August, we brought you “One Country’s Grim Assessment Of Greece’s Future” in which we highlighted comments from Finnish Foreign Minister Timo Soini.

“Truth is the strongest force. We should admit that this isn’t going to work,” Soini said, criticizing Brussels’ decision to back a third bailout program for Athens after a summer of fraught negotiations. “I hope that the EU and euro zone, that in due course, we can face the facts and say enough is enough and that we must do something else,” he continued.

Well as it turns out, Soini thinks Finland “must do something else” when it comes to its participation in the single currency. Echoing sentiments espoused by Center Party politician Paavo Vayrynen – a former foreign minister who has pushed for Finland to exit the euro – Soini bemoans the fact that his country can’t resort to currency devaluation to boost competitiveness. 

“Debate on the subject will gather steam,” Soini said in Helsinki on Tuesday, before noting that unfortunately, a referendum on a euro exit “wouldn’t provide [short-term] solutions [because] the fact is that Finland is a member of the euro area.”

That “fact”, Soini says, is to blame for Finland’s slumping economy, which has contracted for three years running and turned in a decidedly bad Q3 in route to what may well end up being a fourth consecutive year of recession. 

“This might seem an odd record for a country whose sovereign debt still enjoys the rare accolade of a Triple-A rating, whose government debt-to-GDP ratio remains a relatively modest 62%, and which didn’t experience a banking bust,” WSJ opined last month. “The simplistic answer is to blame the euro[because if] Finland had retained its own currency, it could have responded to shocks by devaluing to regain competitiveness, as it did in the aftermath of its financial crisis in the 1990s,” The Journal adds.