Finnish Rural Party The predecessor of the Finns Party was the
Finnish Rural Party (SMP), founded by Agrarian League dissident
Veikko Vennamo in 1959. Vennamo ran into serious disagreement with Arvo Korsimo, the Agrarian League's
party secretary, and was excluded from the
parliamentary group. As a result, Vennamo immediately started building his own organization and founded the Finnish Rural Party. Vennamo was a
populist and became a critic of President
Urho Kekkonen and of political corruption within the "old parties", particularly the
Centre Party (the renamed Agrarian League). The Rural Party achieved two major victories in the elections of
1970 and
1983, winning 18 and 17 seats, respectively. In the 1970s, Vennamo's personalized leadership style alienated some in the party, which led to a split in the parliamentary group in 1972. After the Rural Party's new rise in 1983 under Vennamo's son Pekka, the party became a partner in two
coalition governments. However, the party's support declined steadily in the late-1980s and early-1990s. In
1995, the party won only one seat in the
Finnish parliament and soon filed for bankruptcy.
Founding of the Finns Party and its rise in popularity square,
Helsinki in 2010 In the summer of 1995, following the collapse of the Finnish Rural Party, the decision to found the Finns Party was made by
Timo Soini,
Raimo Vistbacka, Urpo Leppänen and Kari Bärlund. Soini had been the Rural Party's last party secretary and Vistbacka its last chair and
MP. The party collected the five thousand signatures needed for registration and was added to the official party register on 13 October 1995. The first
party congress was held in November. Vistbacka was elected
party chair and Soini the party secretary. It took some time before the Finns Party gained ground in Finnish elections. At the time of its founding in 1995, the party's sole MP was Vistbacka, who was reelected in the
1999 election. In
2003, the party won three seats: besides Vistbacka, Soini and
Tony Halme were elected. In the
2007, the party gained two further seats for a total of five. In the
2008 municipal election, the Finns Party were most successful in those districts where the
Social Democrats and the
Left Alliance lost most. In the
2011 election, the Centre Party suffered the largest blow from the Finns Party's success. According to a 2008–2009 study, Finns Party supporters viewed themselves as
centrist: on a scale where 1 was extreme left and 10 was extreme right, the average supporter placed themselves at 5.4. According to the same study, the supporters were united by patriotism and
social conservatism. A 2011 study indicated that the Finns Party was the most popular party among voters with an annual income of 35,000–50,000
euros, while over a quarter of the party's voters earn over 50,000 per year. The same study also indicated that the party's voters included a higher percentage of
blue-collar workers than those of the Social Democrats. He served as an
MEP for two years, returning to the Finnish parliament in the 2011 election. Soini was the party's presidential candidate for a second time in the
election of 2012.
Jussi Halla-aho succeeded Soini as party chair in 2017.
2011–2017 The Finns Party obtained 39 seats in the 2011 election, making them the third largest party, narrowly behind the
National Coalition Party (44) and the Social Democrats (42). Soini received 43,212 personal votes, the highest number of all candidates, leaving behind the Foreign Minister
Alexander Stubb and the Finance Minister
Jyrki Katainen in their
Uusimaa electoral district. The popularity of the party rose from 4.1% to 19.1% in just four years.
Helsingin Sanomat wrote in an editorial that the party and Soini had "rewritten the electoral history books". According to political analyst
Jan Sundberg, Soini had the ability to appeal to common people and make complicated things look easy. The election result was also referred to as "shocking" and "exceptional". According to an opinion poll, most of the party's supporters accepted this decision. The Finns Party's popularity initially continued to rise after the 2011 election: in one opinion poll from June 2011 gave the party a record popularity of 23 percent. The party's membership rose to over 8,000 members by 2013 (up from circa 5,500 in 2011 and circa 1,000 in 2005). Membership in the party's
youth organisation rose as well, going from 800 before the 2011 election to over 2,200 in 2013. The party nominated Soini as its candidate for the 2012 presidential election; Soini interpreted the result by saying that half of the party's voters wanted him for president, while the other half wanted to him to remain as party chair. In
municipal elections later in 2012, the party got 12.3 percent of votes and 1,195 seats in the municipal councils, up more than 750 from the previous municipal election. However, this result saw the votes for the party shrink significantly from the 2011 parliamentary election result. The party got 12.9 percent of votes in the
2014 European Parliament election and increased its number of MEPs to two. In the
2015 election, the Finns Party got 17.7% of the votes and 38 seats. This meant that they were the third largest party by votes but the second largest party by seats. The Finns Party subsequently entered into a
coalition government with the Centre Party and the NCP, led by Prime Minister
Juha Sipilä. The party's participation in the
Sipilä Cabinet marked a softening of its
Eurosceptic positions. On 22 June 2016, Finns Party MP Maria Tolppanen joined the Social Democrats, after which the Finns Party had 37 seats in the parliament. In March 2017, Soini announced that he would step down as party chair in the next party congress in June.
2017 leadership election and splits In June 2017,
Jussi Halla-aho and
Sampo Terho faced off in the
leadership election, in which Halla-aho received 949 votes against Terho's 646 votes and thus succeeded Soini as party chair. Sipilä and
Minister of Finance Petteri Orpo soon announced that they would not continue their coalition with the Finns Party if it was led by Halla-aho. Subsequently, twenty Finns Party MPs, including Soini and Terho, defected to form a new parliamentary group under the name New Alternative, later renamed to
Blue Reform and after that, in 2022, into
Finnish Reform Movement. As all cabinet ministers were among the defectors, the then Blue Reform made an agreement with Sipilä to stay in the government. Following the split, MPs
Veera Ruoho and
Arja Juvonen left the Finns Party parliamentary group to continue as
independents, after which the party's seats were reduced to fifteen. All of the defecting MPs were subsequently expelled from the Finns Party. In the following weeks, MPs
Ritva Elomaa and Arja Juvonen regretted their decision and re-joined the party, raising the amount of MPs to seventeen. The party nominated MP
Laura Huhtasaari as its candidate for the
2018 presidential election. In the election, Huhtasaari placed third with 6.9 percent of the votes, while the incumbent president
Sauli Niinistö went on to secure his second term with a majority of votes.
2019 general election and revival At the
2019 Finnish parliamentary election, the Finns Party finished in second place and increased its number of MPs to 39 (with its strongest result being in
Satakunta) while the breakaway
Blue Reform party lost all of its seats. On 21 June 2021, Jussi Halla-aho announced that he would retire from his position as a party leader in August 2021. He was succeeded by MP
Riikka Purra on 14 August. Since 2020, further minor splits have emerged within the party, forming the
Power Belongs to the People party and
Blue-and-Black Movement. During the
2023 Finnish parliamentary election the party finished in second place ahead of the Social Democrats with 20% of the vote and 46 seats, marking the strongest result to date for the party. In April 2023,
National Coalition Party leader
Petteri Orpo announced his attention to form a governing coalition with the Finns Party,
Swedish People's Party, and the
Christian Democrats. In the
Orpo Cabinet, the Finns have seven ministers out of 19. Former party leader
Jussi Halla-aho was elected
Speaker of the Parliament of Finland.
In the European Parliament When the Finns Party first gained representation in the European Parliament in 2009, it became a founding member of the
Europe of Freedom and Democracy Group (EFD) in the Parliament. After the 2014 election, the party chose to leave the EFD to join the
European Conservatives and Reformists Group (ECR). Commenting on the party's choice of group, party secretary Riikka Slunga-Poutsalo said in 2014 that joining a right-wing parliamentary group would not change the party's characteristic of being a "centre-left workers' party". After the 2019 election, the party joined the
Identity and Democracy Group; however, this decision was reverted after the 2023 parliamentary election, with the Finns Party rejoining the ECR after a four-year break. ==Ideology==