For Finns, the second round of the presidential election, held on Sunday February 11, marked the end of an era. Elected for the first time in 2012, then again in 2018, Sauli Niinistö, 75, was bowing out. This discreet man, who brought his country into NATO after the invasion of Ukraine, will probably go down in the history books as one of the country's most popular presidents since its independence in 1917.
At the end of a campaign largely dominated by security issues, poll favorite Alexander Stubb, 55, was elected with a result eventually closer than expected. He obtained 51.6% of the vote, beating the environmentalist former foreign minister, Pekka Haavisto, who found himself in the unhappy position of coming second for a third time.
"When the motherland calls, you answer," Stubb said in August 2023, as he announced his candidacy, six years after leaving politics and Finland for an international career, as vice-president of the European Investment Bank. He then became the director of the School of Transnational Governance at the European University Institute in Florence, Italy, where he lived since 2020.
On Sunday evening, accompanied by his wife, an English-born law expert, and their two children, this Europhile, polyglot, international relations specialist and triathlete declared that becoming the country's 13th president was the "greatest honor of [his] life" and that he would use this position to"promote peace."
As president, his powers will be limited to foreign policy, which must be decided in coordination with the government. During the election campaign, he made it clear that his position on Russia did not differ from that of Niinistö. Since Russia invaded Ukraine, Finland cut all political and diplomatic ties with its neighbor and decided to join NATO. Stubb made no secret of his support for NATO membership, long before the country's candidacy was even on the agenda. He recently declared himself in favor of a "more European" NATO.
Like Niinistö, he belongs to the conservative National Coalition Party, but any resemblance between the two men, whose relations have sometimes been strained, ends there. During the campaign, Stubb had to redouble his efforts to contradict those who criticized him for his "arrogance" and his "spontaneity." These criticisms date back to the time when he briefly led the government, between June 2014 and May 2015, during a term peppered with controversies. One such example was when he showed up in shorts and flip-flops, on his bike, at a press conference in August 2014. This mandate ended with his party's defeat in the 2015 general election. This wider political failure was coupled with a personal one, when, a year later and having become finance minister, he was dethroned as party leader by Petteri Orpo, the current prime minister.
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