Finland joins France's nuclear deterrence plan

Finland will join France's forward nuclear deterrence initiative, the two countries said Monday, extending the plan to a country that shares a long border with Russia.

“Finland has decided to join forward deterrence,” Finland and France said in a joint statement. “A nuclear steering group will be set up in the coming months to begin implementing this cooperation.”

Finland is the tenth European country to join the plan. Britain, Germany, Poland, Sweden, the Netherlands, Belgium, Greece and Denmark were initially involved, and Norway joined in May.

The announcement came as part of a new strategic partnership between Finland and France, due to be signed in Helsinki on Monday by the countries' foreign ministers.

Finnish President Alexander Stubb confirmed the decision on X, saying it was “first and foremost about strengthening European security”. He said the French deterrent would not “replace or overlap” with NATO's and that Finland's priority was to act as part of NATO and the European Union.

France's initiative would extend its nuclear deterrent to other European countries through joint exercises and allow participating countries, for the first time, to temporarily host French nuclear-armed aircraft. Paris would retain national control over its nuclear arsenal, with the final decision on its use remaining with the French president.

Estonian Prime Minister Kristen Michal told AFP on the sidelines of a European Arctic Summit in Rovaniemi, Finland, that Estonia was in “discussion” with France about joining the initiative.

“It needs certain capabilities, readiness and so on,” Michal said. He said Estonia was already under NATO's nuclear umbrella and that deeper cooperation with France in the nuclear field could follow if conditions were met.

Finland abandoned decades of military non-alignment when it joined NATO in 2023 after Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Its parliament voted in June to lift the country's blanket ban on nuclear weapons, allowing them to be brought into, transported through, supplied or possessed in Finland when required for the country's defence.