ABSTRACT
Successful bridge-building was seen in Finland as a means to promote the country's own security and its wider security policy objectives in a divided Europe. In the interest of cooperation between European states belonging to different military blocs, new direct bridges are hastily being built to draw Eastern and Western Europe closer together. In addition to political fears, there also used to be economic fears of opening the Finnish market to West European industrial competition. The amount of cooperation issues and opportunities where a special intermediary is not needed will increase as a positive international atmosphere keeps growing in Europe. The role of the N + N countries at the conference on security and cooperation in Europe meetings has become institutionalized in practice, though not formally, as the N + N have acted as coordinators of the unofficial working groups where much of the practical bargaining work takes place.
