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RELEASE 25 AUGUST 2009
Newsletter 4/2009The annual general meeting of ESIN on the island of ElbaANCIM, the organization of Italian inhabited islands, will this year host the ninth annual general meeting and conference of ESIN - the European Small Islands Network - on the island of Elba, on 7 - 9 September. FÖSS will be represented at the meeting by Chairperson Pirjo Hoffström, executive director Kristin Mattsson and chairperson of the youth section Eelin Hoffström. One of the main items on the meeting agenda will be the election of the supervising board of ESIN. Each member association is entitled to have one ordinary member and one deputy elected into the supervising board. Other issues to be decided at the meeting are the amount of the membership fee, the plan of activities, and the budget. Also, received motions and the issues that have been deliberated in the context of contacts with Brussels/EU will be considered. From our point of view, of great interest is that the Åland Islands have applied for a membership; even this item will be considered at the meeting. Besides the Åland Islands also England - Isles of Scilly - has applied for a membership. ESIN will consist of eleven national member associations, in case these new applications are approved. Please, learn more about ESIN at the web site www.europeansmallislands.net. The youth forum in operationThe digital youth forum, for which FÖSS received financial support from the Regional Administrative Board of Western Finland, has been inaugurated. The address of the web site is: foss.fi/young. The forum has been divided into various subthemes which makes it possible to take up issues that a young person living on an island finds important. On these islands, there does not live all too many juveniles who together might deliberate one's problems and frustrations. On the other side, there live on many of the islands lonely young people, and the forum can be considered as a tool to get in touch with others in similar circumstances. Thus, join the discussion forum, please! Free trips onboard commuter ferries for everybodyThe people living on the islands of Finland, both the all-the-year-round inhabitants and the leisure time dwellers; have hardly avoided noticing that trips onboard commuter ferries are going to be free for everybody. The Ministry of Transport and Communications has made the decision that from 1.9-2009 ferries in archipelago are free for everyone. The ministry appointed in April a working group to find out about a reasonable service level as regards traffic and transports in the archipelago. The working group worked out a service level classification and studied the traffic and transportation demands of island inhabitants within the realms of Saaristomeri (Archipelago Sea) and Suomenlahti (Gulf of Finland) regions, the basics of pricing the various traffic routes and transportation services, and also the financing of commuter ferry services. The ticket incomes as such only cover a few percents of the total expenses of commuter ferry traffic. One of the proposals of the working group was that completely charge free commuter ferry trips for everyone should be brought out, and that island inhabitants should be given a right of way onboard the ferries, similar to the system utilized onboard the road ferries. The group also proposed that the services provided by commuter ferries as well as traffic facilities should be acquired on the basis of competition principles. Acquisition of these services is from now on requested to be financed through the ordinary Government budget, from the sub moment of basic road maintenance. So, the inhabitants of cities and towns are soon given the option of free travel to the archipelago. Additional informationFÖSS, NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF FINNISH ISLANDS Executive manager |
