ABSTRACT
Despite a reputation for welfarism and a tradition of public intervention, the Nordic EU-countries Finland, Denmark and Sweden have been affected by the same policy shifts as elsewhere. This chapter provides a case study of their experiences of public ownership and privatisation and a critical assessment of the major motives for their present policy. In particular, we focus on the challenge to public ownership in small countries that is caused by European economic integration. This is often seen as restricting scope for wider objectives than profit maximisation, but it turns out that there is one sense in which the opposite is true.
