"I want to highlight that against those global threats Finland needs to be in close co-operation with all its neighboring countries, including Russia," Veera Ruoho said.
Ruoho also noted that Finland "is not under threat from any country in the world," and stressed that "security challenges come more from uncontrolled migration crisis, extremism and terrorism."
The current level of cooperation between NATO and Finland is sufficient and the country is not currently expected to join the alliance, Ruoho said.
"Current ties are enough. Good co-operation and joint rehearsals support Finland's national defence," Veera Ruoho said.
The lawmaker also pointed out that if the Finnish government decided to join the alliance, it would need to hold a national referendum on the matter, "because joining NATO without the support from the people of the country concerned would be bad governance with this scale of decision."
Last week, Finland hosted a two-day Foreign And Security (FAS) summit, which was attended by Finnish and Swedish political leaders and security officials. The general consensus reached there was that while the security picture in the greater Baltic region has become destabilized, Russia does not pose a direct security threat to either Finland or Sweden.
