In Finland, procedural autonomy is not a widely discussed subject. Thus, EU legislation is followed (and technically adhered to) in case law without substantial problems and without broad substantive discussions. There is not much discussion of procedural autonomy among legal scholars, either. In this chapter, an attempt will be made to map the current lay of the land as far as the limited discussion is concerned. The chapter will also try to find some answers to the question of why the Finnish discussion has been relatively so quiet. These answers can partly be found in the Finnish way of seeing legislation as a tool for organising common life in society combined with a tendency to approach especially procedural law from an instrumental point of view. Other reasons include differences in legal culture; Finns tend to readily adopt and apply legal concepts without extensive prior critical discussion thus favouring a stable national legal policy.

BACKGROUND

As mentioned above, in Finland, the principle of procedural autonomy is not widely debated, neither in doctrine nor in case law. Likewise, there is little evidence of Euro-scepticism among legal scholars. Especially not among experts in procedural law. One reason for this could be that Finland is a small country without many legal experts, which means that not all topics can be discussed due to a lack of human resources. Another reason could be differences in culture. Finns seem to adopt legal measures easily and tend to act operationally instead of discussing critically, in the sense that they prefer a stable national legal policy. A third reason could be the way procedural law is seen from a Finnish perspective. If seen from a practical point of view, the law has an instrumental perspective in proceedings. This means that procedural problems are principally tackled through practical solutions rather than through a system that seeks to uphold a purely procedural system. All of this is important to keep in mind whenever procedural autonomy is discussed – or not discussed, and in Finland in-depth critical discussion on this topic is notably lacking. Instead, EU policy is readily accepted by the legal system which strives to follow EU law correctly and which strives to technically comply with the relevant regulation.