Tumultuous Elections in Finland

Finland had in many regards historical parliamentary elections on 17th of April. The result broke multiple records: Never before has any party lost so much seats at one time as the prime-minister party for the past eight years, the Centre party (ALDE) did. They lost a every third of their 51 seats of the last elections, and as a result declared unilaterally that they wish to retire to the opposition, signifying also an end for the Centre-Right government coalition. 

Never before has any party either managed to gain so many seats in a single election as the True Finns party did. The party that is part of the Euro-sceptic EFD group in the European Parliament managed grow virtually overnight from the position of the smallest party in the Parliament (5 seats) to third biggest party in the parliament with 39 seats. While the party is often classified as populist extreme right due to their anti-EU, anti-immigration and pro-patriotic pursuits, the fact remains that in economics as well as other more conventional political issues the party's politics can be best defined as Centre-Left.

Also never before has there been a result where not a single party was even close to having 50 seats (out of 200) in the parliament. While EPP-member National Coalition ("Kokoomus") emerged from the elections as the biggest party, they also lost some 6 seats, ending up at 44 seats, which is merely two seats more than the runner-up Social Democrats and 5 seats more than the True Finns. As the Chairman of the biggest party, EPP Vice Chairman and former Deputy Prime Minister Mr. Jyrki Katainen has now a most difficult task ahead of him to try and form a majority government with the Social Democrats and the True Finns. This coalition seems to be the only really viable possibility in a situation where neither the Socialist parties combined, nor the Centre-Right parties combined have a majority.

From the historical perspective such a coalition would not be as unlikely as in some European states. After a period of many short-lived minority governments and weak majority governments in the 1970s a system was established in the 1980s to try to build broad coalitions which would last the entire duration of their mandate. Since then it has become a de-facto political practice that of the three big parties (Kokoomus, Social Democrats and Centre) two biggest always form a coalition together in any combination, and take in as many smaller parties as needed to ensure at least 60% Majority. Therefore, Kokoomus has been in coalition on multiple occasions both with the Centre and with the Social Democrats, even twice in a coalition reinforced by the Left Union party, who are the biggest surviving fraction of the old Communist party.

Therefore the biggest challenge is not going to be agreeing of a coalion programme with the Social Democrats. The biggest challenge will be to accommodate the True Finns, who at the moment are on many regards an unknown variable to our political field. First of all, to see if the True Finns are able to reach a compromise on key issues, at all. Second, to see if their leadership can actually control their motley crew of a parliament group, where half of the new MPs have little or no prior experience in political decision making. Naturally a coalition will be short-lived if one of its members cannot bring their MPs to vote in favour of government proposals.

From the point of view of students and young people the elections were very successful, especially for the Student Union of Kokoomus (EDS Member TK Finland). Two current members of TK, one of them former TK Vice Chairwoman Sofia Vikman, and additionally one formerly active member of TK, all three under 30 years of age, got elected as MPs. Also the Youth Branch (KNL, a YEPP member) managed to get one of their former actives elected as an MP, making Kokoomus the parliament group with most young MPs in the new Parliament.