TheGreen League, (Finnish:Vihreä liitto[ˈʋihreæˈliːtːo],Vihr;Swedish:Gröna förbundet[ˈɡrøːnɑfœrˈbʉndet];Northern Sami:Ruoná lihttu;Inari Sami:Ruánáá litto;Skolt Sami:Ruânn lett) shortened tothe Greens, (Finnish:Vihreät; Swedish:de Gröna)[2] is agreenpolitical party in Finland.[3][4][5] Ideologically, the Green League is positioned on thecentre-left of the political spectrum.[6][7][8]
Originally split on whether Finland should join theEuropean Union, the Green League adopted apro-European stance. It was the first Finnish party in favor of thefederalisation of the European Union.[9][10] The Green League is among the midsized political parties inFinland. The Greens hold thirteen of the 200 seats in theFinnish Parliament and two of Finland's15 European Parliament seats. The party is a member of theGlobal Greens and theEuropean Green Party; itsMEPs sit in theGreens–European Free Alliance group in theEuropean Parliament.
Founded in 1987, the party absorbed a number ofgreen organizations and their members, electing its first MPs in the1987 Finnish parliamentary election. The party won ten seats in the1991 election. Despite small lossesin the 1995 election,Pekka Haavisto joinedPaavo Lipponen'sfirst cabinet, which was composed of a "rainbow" coalition. This made the Green League the firstgreen party to form a national cabinet. The party remained in government until 2002 when it resigned in opposition tonuclear power. The party slowly rose in popularity between 1995 and2007, winning a total of 15 seats, and joined the centre-ledVanhanen II cabinet. In the2011 election, the party suffered significant losses, dropping to ten seats, but remained in government. In2015, the party recovered its losses, returning to 15 seats. In the2019 election, the party achieved by far its best-ever result, winning 20 seats and 11.5% of the vote. They became the fifth-largest party in parliament and the third-most-big member of theRinne cabinet.
After the2017 municipal elections, the Green League was the fourth-largest party with 534 seats. They gained 211 more seats since the2012 Finnish municipal elections. Since June 2023, the party's leader and chairperson has beenSofia Virta.[11] From 2015 to 2019, the party was in opposition. It provided harsh criticism regarding the policies of the conservativeSipilä cabinet on financial support for economically well-off companies,Fortum's purchase ofUniper, and the expedited process ofconstitution-changing surveillance laws.[12][13][14]
The Green League was founded on 28 February 1987 and was registered as a political party the next year. Political activity had begun already in the early 1980s, whenenvironmental activists,feminists, disillusioned young politicians from the marginalizedLiberal People's Party and other active groups began to campaign on green issues in Finland. In 1995, it was the firstEuropean green party to be part of a state-levelcabinet.
The party was founded as a popular movement, which explains its name's descriptor,liitto, "league". Initially, there was much resistance within the movement against founding a political party, motivated byRobert Michels'iron law of oligarchy, which claims that movements inevitably degenerate intooligarchies when they create a formal organization.[15] The party still stresses openness and democratic decision-making, even if the Finnish word, "liitto", has been dropped from the party's website and advertisements, the word still remains in its official and registered name.
The first two parliamentary representatives were elected even before the registration, in the1983 parliamentary election. These were the first independent representatives in the Finnish Parliament. In1987 the number of seats rose to four, and in1991 to a total of ten.
About half of the party's members were against Finland joining theEuropean Union in 1994. Later, polls showed that most Greens were anti-Eurozone.[16] The party heads declined to fight againsteuro-adoption.
In the1995 election, the Green League received a total of nine seats out of 200. The party joined the coalition cabinet led by theSocial Democratic Party, andPekka Haavisto became theMinister of the Environment,[17] thus becoming the first green minister in Europe.[18]
The Green League received 7.3% of the vote, and gained two additional seats in the1999 election, raising the total to 11. The Greens continued inthe next coalition cabinet, but resigned in protest on 26 May 2002, after the cabinet's decision to allow the construction ofa new nuclear plant was accepted by the parliament.
In 2003, the Green League received 8.0% of the vote, receiving a total of 14 seats. They increased their seats to 15 in the2007 election while receiving 8.5% of the vote. In the2011 election, the party lost five seats.
In the2009 European Parliament elections, the Greens gained two of the thirteen Finnish seats in theEuropean Parliament, which were occupied bySatu Hassi andHeidi Hautala.
At the municipal level, the Greens are an important force in the politics of the main cities of Finland. In the municipal election of 2008 the Greens received 8.9% of the vote; the vote share was considerably higher inHelsinki, where the Greens became the second-largest party with 23.2% of the vote.[19] In several other cities, the Greens achieved the position of the third-largest party. The Greens are weaker in rural area and especially in municipalities that experience high levels of outward migration.
By the 2017 Green League party congress, Niinistö had served three full two-year terms as the chairman and stepped down according to the rules of the party. In the followingleadership election, there were six candidates running for party chairman, of whom MPTouko Aalto won the election.[20]
Soon after Aalto's election, the popularity of the Green League surged in the polls and raised briefly as the second most popular party in the country.[21] However, in September 2017 the poll numbers turned into a downward slope, which continued until autumn 2018.[22] After taking a month of sick leave due to exhaustion in September 2018, Aalto soon announced that he was resigning from his post, citing depression and fatigue.[23]
In November 2018, the Green League decided to choose a temporary chairman to lead the party into the 2019 parliamentary elections and until the next party convention. In the leadership election, former chairman Pekka Haavisto was once again elected as chairman.[24]
In June 2019, Haavisto stepped down as the chairman of the party.Maria Ohisalo was the only candidate in the leadership election and was thus elected as chairman in the city ofPori.[25]
In the2023 parliamentary election, Ohisalo was re-elected with 6,937 votes.[26] However, as the Greens suffered an election defeat, Ohisalo announced that she would not seek another term as chairman. In June 2023, she was replaced bySofia Virta.[27]
The Green League is no longer aprotest party, nor analternative movement. Some Green candidates reject classifying the party as either left-wing or right-wing. Economic opinions of the members range between left and right.[15] However, members of the party on average place their party left of theSocial Democratic Party and right of theLeft Alliance.[28]
The party is one of the strongest proponents forsame-sex marriage. The party is also distinct in its opposition againstuniversal male conscription and wants to opt for a gender-neutral, selective version. The eventual goal of the Greens is voluntary military service.
In 2015, the party includeduniversal basic income (UBI) as a proposal in their platform.[29] In February 2019, the party announced that it wanted to introduce a€300 universal basic income in the 2019 to 2023 parliamentary term, before transitioning to a€600 tax-free UBI during the following 2023 to 2027 parliamentary term.[30]
In the spring of 2018, the party proposed lowering the voting age to 15.[31]
The party stated in December 2018 that it supports investing €10 billion in Finland's railway infrastructure and improving rail connections in the country, including building high-speed rail connections.[32]
In September 2021, the party voted to pass an internal motion supporting the legalisation and regulation of cannabis in Finland. It thus became the first party in Finland's Parliament to publicly state support for cannabis being legalised in the country.[33][34][35]
| Election | Votes | % | Seats | +/- | Government |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1983 | 43,754 | 1.47 | 2 / 200 | Opposition | |
| 1987 | 115,988 | 4.03 | 4 / 200 |  2 | Opposition |
| 1991 | 185,894 | 6.82 | 10 / 200 | 6 | Opposition |
| 1995 | 181,198 | 6.52 | 9 / 200 |  1 | Coalition |
| 1999 | 194,846 | 7.27 | 11 / 200 | 2 | Coalition(1999–2002) |
| Opposition(2002–2003) | |||||
| 2003 | 223,846 | 8.01 | 14 / 200 | 3 | Opposition |
| 2007 | 234,429 | 8.46 | 15 / 200 | 1 | Coalition |
| 2011 | 213,172 | 7.25 | 10 / 200 | 5 | Coalition(2011–2014) |
| Opposition(2014–2015) | |||||
| 2015 | 253,102 | 8.53 | 15 / 200 | 5 | Opposition |
| 2019 | 354,194 | 11.49 | 20 / 200 | 5 | Coalition |
| 2023 | 217,426 | 7.03 | 13 / 200 | 7 | Opposition |
| Election | Councillors | Votes | % |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1984 | 101 | 76,441 | 2.8 |
| 1988 | 94 | 61,581 | 2.3 |
| 1992 | 343 | 184,787 | 6.9 |
| 1996 | 292 | 149,334 | 6.3 |
| 2000 | 338 | 171,707 | 7.7 |
| 2004 | 313 | 175,933 | 7.4 |
| 2008 | 370 | 228,277 | 8.9 |
| 2012 | 323 | 213,100 | 8.5 |
| 2017 | 534 | 320,235 | 12.5 |
| 2021 | 433 | 259,104 | 10.6 |
| 2025 | 418 | 254,172 | 10.5 |
| Election | Votes | % | Seats | +/– | EP Group |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1996 | 170,670 | 7.59 (#5) | 1 / 16 | New | G |
| 1999 | 166,786 | 13.43 (#4) | 2 / 16 | 1 | G/EFA |
| 2004 | 172,844 | 10.43 (#4) | 1 / 14 | 1 | |
| 2009 | 206,439 | 12.40 (#4) | 2 / 13 | 1 | |
| 2014 | 160,967 | 9.33 (#5) | 1 / 13 | 1 | |
| 2019 | 292,892 | 16.00 (#2) | 3 / 14 | 2 | |
| 2024 | 206,332 | 11.28 (#5) | 2 / 15 | 1 |
Parliamentarian and formerMEPHeidi Hautala was a candidate in the presidential elections in 2000 and 2006, taking approximately a 3.5% share of votes in the first round in each.Pekka Haavisto was the first Green candidate in the2012 election to enter the second round. Haavisto got an 18.8% share of votes in the first round, and lost to centre-rightSauli Niinistö in the second round held on 5 February.
| Election | Candidate | 1st round | 2nd round | Result | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Votes | % | Votes | % | |||
| 2000 | Heidi Hautala | 100,740 | 3.29 (#5) | Lost | ||
| 2006 | Heidi Hautala | 105,248 | 3.49 (#4) | Lost | ||
| 2012 | Pekka Haavisto | 574,275 | 18.76 (#2) | 1,077,425 | 37.41 (#2) | Lost |
| 2018 | Pekka Haavisto | 370,823 | 12.40 (#2) | Lost | ||
| 2024 | Pekka Haavisto[a] | 836,357 | 25.80 (#2) | 1,476,548 | 48.38 (#2) | Lost |
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The following 20 Greens politicians were elected to theFinnish Parliament in the2019 parliamentary election. 16 out of 20 members are first-timers. 17 of the members are women.[36]
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Since 2024, the Green League has been represented by two MEPs in theEuropean Parliament.
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