Pekka Haavisto

Pekka Olavi Haavisto (born 23 March 1958) is a Finnish politician of the Green League who served as the Minister for Foreign Affairs from 2019 to 2023.

Haavisto was a member of the Parliament of Finland from 1987 to 1995.

He was the chairperson of the Green League from 1993 to 1995.

Between April 1995 and April 1999 he was the Minister of Environment in the Lipponen I Cabinet.

He served as the Minister of the Environment in Paavo Lipponen's first cabinet between 1995 and 1999.

He was the first European cabinet minister representing a Green party.

From 1999 to 2005, Haavisto worked for the United Nations in various tasks.

He led the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) research groups in Kosovo, Afghanistan, Iraq, Liberia, Palestine and Sudan.

He also coordinated the UN investigation in the effects of depleted uranium in Kosovo, Montenegro, Serbia and Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Haavisto also represented the UNEP in the investigations in the Baia Mare mining accident in Romania.

In 2005 he was appointed as the special representative of the European Union in Sudan where he participated in the Darfur peace talks.

Haavisto returned to the Finnish Parliament in the Finnish parliamentary election of March 2007 after an absence of 12 years and was re-elected in 2011, 2015, and 2019.

In 2007 and 2011 Haavisto was re-elected to Parliament by the electoral district of Helsinki.

In 2011, Haavisto was nominated as the Green League candidate for the Finnish presidential election of 2012.

Haavisto finished second in the Finnish presidential elections in 2012, 2018 and 2024; twice to Sauli Niinistö and finally to Alexander Stubb.

Haavisto became the first openly gay candidate to run for the presidency of Finland.

In the first round of the election on 22 January 2012, he finished second with 18.8 percent of the votes.

In the run-off on 5 February, he garnered more than one million votes (37.4 percent), coming second to National Coalition Party candidate, former Finance Minister Sauli Niinistö.

Haavisto was the first openly gay candidate and the first male candidate to have served in civil service instead of the military service to make it to the second round of a presidential election in Finland.

In October 2013 he was appointed as the Minister for International Development after Heidi Hautala resigned from the job.

He has also been a member of the Helsinki City Council.

In February 2017, Haavisto announced that he would reprise his candidacy in the 2018 presidential election.

The decision came after Haavisto had been approached multiple times by the Green League.

In the election, Haavisto placed second with 12.4 percent of the votes, while President Niinistö went on to secure his second term with a majority of votes.

In October 2018, the chairman of the Green League Touko Aalto announced that he was resigning from his post, citing depression and fatigue.

On 4 November 2018, he defeated MP Outi Alanko-Kahiluoto in the leadership election and became temporary chairman.

The decision prompted an immediate leadership election, with the goal to elect a temporary chairman to lead the party into the 2019 parliamentary elections and until the next party convention.

As many members of the party called for more prominent and experienced politicians to take part in the election, Haavisto announced his candidacy.

In June 2019, Haavisto stepped down as the chairman of the party.

He was succeeded by Maria Ohisalo.

Following their best ever result in the 2019 national elections and after becoming part of the incoming governing coalition under the leadership of Prime Minister Antti Rinne, the Green League named Haavisto as the next foreign minister.

In this capacity, he chaired the meetings of the Foreign Affairs Council during Finland's rotating presidency of the Council of the European Union in 2019.

In 2019, Haavisto called for the EU to intensify efforts on improving relations with Russia in the face of international conflict, transatlantic tensions and Brexit.

In December 2020, the Parliament's Constitutional Law Committee found that Haavisto, who had pushed for Finnish children from the al-Hawl refugee camp in northern Syria to be brought to Finland quickly in late 2019, had broken Finnish law by trying to replace a foreign ministry official who refused to act after a difference of opinion over the exact repatriation proceedings.

The events were leaked to the press causing a political crisis.

Haavisto quickly reverted his decision to demote the official and offered him the same position as earlier.

The Committee declared it had not found reason to bring criminal charges against the foreign minister, due to the minister's higher than usual prosecution threshold required by the constitution, but specified that Haavisto had operated in contravention to the Administration Law and the Foreign Relations Act.

Two Green League MPs published a dissenting opinion and advocated for a softer verdict, causing controversy in the Committee.

In Parliament, Haavisto received the Parliament's support in a 101-68 interpellation vote.

Haavisto's decision to return the refugees received the Parliament's support on a 110-79 interpellation vote.