By Jussi Rosendahl
HELSINKI (Reuters) - Finland's finance minister said on Monday there could be a new financial crisis if Europe does not help Portugal, trying to persuade Finns against voting for his euro-sceptic rivals in an election on Sunday.
Jyrki Katainen's party, the National Coalition, is leading polls along with its coalition partner, the Centre Party. But the opposition Social Democrats and True Finns are close behind.
Both the True Finns and Social Democrats have been critical of aiding troubled European economies, and their participation in the next government or increased seats in parliament could complicate Finland's stance in euro zone policy.
"The message is this: since 2009, Finland lost 40 billion euros (35 billion pounds) of tax money because of the financial crisis. In 2009, Finnish pension funds' return was 17 billion euros negative," Katainen told Reuters.
"We don't want this to happen again, so we need to back such solutions that keep up the Europe's financial stability," he said on the sidelines of a campaign rally.
Finland retains the right to put requests to tap the euro zone's temporary rescue fund to a majority parliamentary vote.
Drawing up a common aid package for Portugal will take a few weeks, which means in Finland it will be the new parliament that votes on it.
ELECTION ISSUE
Aid to other European nations has been a hot election topic, and a poll on Friday showed 59 percent of Finns object to helping out troubled European countries by loans or guarantees. Katainen saw that number in a positive light.
"It is actually good news that as many as the rest can accept it," he said. "These are difficult, complicated issues, and I think we haven't had chance to run them over in a way that everybody would understand what's really at stake here."
The European Union's top economic official Olli Rehn, himself a Finn, urged Finland on Saturday to back Portugal's bailout, warning that a rejection could derail economic recovery and financial stability in the euro zone.
Katainen later said that any restructuring of Greece's debt would jeopardise Europe's stability because pension companies and banks might react by putting the brakes on financing euro government debt.
"(Greece's) debt restructuring is a very big risk at this very point. We do not want to see the same financial crisis again," Katainen told public broadcaster YLE.
There are doubts over Greece, which obtained an international bailout a year ago, meeting fiscal targets, which is why some senior officials in euro zone governments say restructuring the debt is inevitable.
However, the EU and the IMF have repeatedly ruled it out.
"We have a completely common line in Eurogroup (meeting of finance ministers) ... Nobody supports debt restructuring at this stage," Katainen said.
"It doesn't make any sense to me that countries, that have managed their finances poorly, would be told that they don't have to pay off their debts."