As a student, Sipilä worked for a short time in the
Finnish Centre Youth, but otherwise he did not have experience in party politics before being elected to the Finnish Parliament in 2011 with 5,543 personal votes. In April 2012, Sipilä announced his candidacy for the chairman's position in the party congress of the summer. On June 9, 2012, the party congress elected him chairman. He beat
Tuomo Puumala in the second round by 1251 to 872 delegate votes. Sipilä led his party to victory in the 2015 election, where the Centre Party gained 14 seats compared to the previous election. With 30,758 personal votes he was the most popular candidate in the election. Following the election, he was tasked with forming a government coalition; and as the leader of the Centre Party, he began formal negotiations with the
Finns Party and the
National Coalition Party and formed a
three-party majority coalition.
Sipilä's Government and European Council President
Donald Tusk, Tallinn Digital Summit 2017 on 6 March 2019 Sipilä's government struggled with Finland's poor economic performance, caused according to
Paul Krugman and others by the constraints of its
eurozone membership and aftershocks from the
European debt crisis, but also by the decline of the paper industry, the fall of
Nokia and a diminution in exports to
Russia. Its attempts to address the problems through policies of spending cuts and reducing labour costs were controversial, particularly cuts to education spending that were seen as threatening Finland's successful public education system. These austerity measures were partly implemented due to
European Commission pressure, which urged Finland to improve its adherence to the
Stability and Growth Pact and reform its labour market to improve competitiveness. On 22 July 2015, Sipilä announced his government's commitment to reducing Finnish wage costs by 5% by 2019, an
internal devaluation caused by Finland's loss of the ability to devalue its currency to boost competitiveness. There were protests against the government's austerity measures. In summer 2017, Finns Party split into two parties, namely
Blue Reform and the current
Finns Party. The Blue Reform members of the former Finns Party, including all ministers, remained in the government after the split. Following the term of Sipilä Cabinet, the Centre Party was the biggest loser of the
2019 parliamentary election, losing 18 seats and falling from largest party to fourth place. The party's support was lower than in any parliamentary election since
1917. Due to the devastating defeat, Sipilä consequently announced that he would continue as the chairman only until Centre Party's next convention in September 2019.
Talvivaara and Yleisradio scandal In 2016, Sipiläs close relatives were revealed to be part-owners of the bankrupt
Talvivaara Mining Company, later renamed and re-organised into the company Terrafame, which had received considerable funds from the Finnish government. A Parliamentary Ombudsman later decided that Sipilä didn't face a conflict of interest over mine deal. However, it was later revealed that Sipilä had contacted
Yleisradio in order to instruct them on how to report on the Talvivaara and Terrafame incidents, leading to suspicion that YLE had been politically pressured. ==Personal life==