Brussels, 02/07/2002 (Agence Europe) - Finnish Prime Minister Paavo Lipponen has written a letter to Romano Prodi in protest of the recent Council decision to authorise State aid to the shipbuilding sector as a response to unfair trade practices on the part of South Korea (see EUROPE of 27 June, p.10 and 28 June, p.11), if talks with Seoul fail end September. Finland, which considers that its shipyards are big enough to counter Korean competition without subsidies, is one of the Member States that voted last week against the temporary defence mechanism proposed by the Commission. In his letter to the president of the European Commission, Mr Lipponen insists "it is a well-known fact that European competitiveness cannot be improved by new aid packages". He went on to add that "although the aid in question is targeted only at certain categories of vessels, there will inevitably be spill-over impacts on other production lines, which will result in a distortion of competition in the Union".