Erkki Tuomioja

Erkki Tuomioja
Tuomioja in 2014
Minister of Foreign Affairs[1]
In office 22 June 2011 – 29 May 2015
Prime Minister	Jyrki Katainen Alexander Stubb
Preceded by	Alexander Stubb
Succeeded by	Timo Soini
In office 25 February 2000 – 19 April 2007
Prime Minister	Paavo Lipponen Anneli Jäätteenmäki Matti Vanhanen
Preceded by	Tarja Halonen
Succeeded by	Ilkka Kanerva
Minister of Trade and Industry
In office 15 April 1999 – 25 February 2000
Prime Minister	Paavo Lipponen
Preceded by	Antti Kalliomäki
Succeeded by	Sinikka Mönkäre
President of the Nordic Council
In office 1 January 2008 – 31 December 2008
Preceded by	Dagfinn Høybråten
Succeeded by	Sinikka Bohlin
Personal details
Born	Erkki Sakari Tuomioja (1946-07-01) 1 July 1946 (age 77) Helsinki, Finland
Political party	Social Democratic
Spouse	Marja Helena Rajala ​ (m. 1978)​
Alma mater	University of Helsinki
Website	tuomioja.org

Erkki Sakari Tuomioja (born 1 July 1946) is a Finnish politician and has previously been a member of the Finnish Parliament. From 2000 to 2007 and 2011 to 2015, he served as the minister for foreign affairs. He was president of the Nordic Council in 2008.^[2]

Tuomioja is a member of the Social Democratic Party of Finland, although his political views are thought to be more to the left than the party line. He is also a member of ATTAC. In 1975, Tuomioja dated Tarja Halonen who later became the president of Finland.^[3]

Biography

Tuomioja comes from a family of politicians. His father Sakari Tuomioja was a prominent liberal Finnish politician and diplomat, and the challenger of Urho Kekkonen for the conservatives and liberals in the 1956 presidential elections. His maternal grandmother was Hella Wuolijoki, the Estonian born writer and socialist activist.^[4]

Tuomioja holds the degrees of Master of Social Sciences (1971) and Master of Science in Economics and Business Administration (1974) from the Helsinki School of Economics, as well as Licentiate in Social Sciences (1980) and Doctor in Social Sciences (1996) from the University of Helsinki. In addition to Finnish, Tuomioja speaks Swedish, English, French, German and Estonian.^[5]

Tuomioja has been a member of the Finnish Parliament 1970–1979 and 1991–present. He held the position of minister of trade and industry in Lipponen's 2nd government,^[6] and became the minister of foreign affairs after Tarja Halonen was elected as president of Finland.^[7] Tuomioja is the longest serving minister for foreign affairs of Finland.

Tuomioja, like several other Finnish socialist politicians of today, took part in the illegal occupation of the Old Student House (Vanha ylioppilastalo) in Helsinki on 25 November 1968. He was a member of the anti-war group Committee of 100 of Finland and took part in the so-called Erik Schüller case, in which a group of students made public incitement against obligatory conscription. Despite his anti-war stance, Tuomioja did carry out his own mandatory military service and is a reservist staff sergeant.^[5]

Tuomioja is the author of several books. His A Delicate Shade of Pink about his grandmother Hella Wuolijoki and her sister Salme Murrik won the Non-Fiction Finlandia Prize in 2006. The book was originally written in English and translated to Finnish as Häivähdys punaista.^[4] In the 1970s and 1980s he was the editor-in-chief of Ydin, a foreign policy and political magazine.^[8]

Tuomioja was behind the initiative to establish Historians without Borders in Finland as an NGO. He has acted as Chairman of the Board of HWB Finland since the founding meeting in the summer of 2015.^[9] Tuomioja is a declared atheist.^[10]

European Union presidency

When Finland held the rotating European Union presidency in the second half of 2006, Tuomioja had a prominent role as the spokesman of European Union foreign policy. He was among the first to demand an immediate cessation of hostilities in the 2006 Israel–Lebanon conflict.^[11] He was one of Finland's most dominant politicians in the 1990s.

See also

• Israel–Finland relations

References

External links

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