Representing a shift to the right, the new Finnish Parliament begins operations on Tuesday as recently elected lawmakers present their credentials after the four-day holiday weekend.
The new legislature is more right-leaning than its predecessor, with most parties in outgoing Prime Minister Sanna Marin's SDP-led centre-left government losing seats, though the SDP gained a few. The 200 MPs include 61 lawmakers from eight parties who are either new to the legislature or returning after stints outside of Parliament. Electoral district boards handed the credentials to successful candidates after last weekend’s election results were confirmed on Wednesday.
The first plenary session of the legislative term is on Wednesday, when MPs will elect the Speaker of Parliament and two deputy speakers. In recent decades the initial Speaker has usually been the chair of the largest party in the legislature, who is most often designated to begin talks on forming a new government.
Thus Petteri Orpo, chair of the National Coalition Party (48 seats) is expected to be named as prime minister–designate by the end of this week. He will begin negotiations on forming a new coalition government with a solid majority of the 200 seats in Parliament. This will be no easy feat as he must agree on a government platform with one major partner – either Riikka Purra’s second-place Finns Party (46 seats) or, failing that, with the third-place Social Democrats (43 seats).
Smaller parties may play crucial role
In either case, he will fall well short of 100 seats and need at least two smaller parties on board. This too, could be tricky, as the fourth-largest party, the Centre (23 seats), says it will not join any new government, and the fifth and sixth largest, the Greens (13 seats) and the Left Alliance (11 seats), have ruled out joining a coalition with the nationalist Finns Party, as has the SDP.
Meanwhile on Monday morning, Greens chair Maria Ohisalo has scheduled a press conference at Parliament in which she is expected to say whether she will seek another term as party leader – and perhaps how willing the Greens are to join a new government.
In any case, the seventh-largest party, the centrist Swedish People’s Party, could play a decisive role, throwing its nine seats behind either a right-leaning or right-left coalition. Like Orpo’s NCP, the party includes more liberal and conservative wings – but has sharp differences with the Finns Party over immigration, language and minority rights, for instance. It was the only current coalition partner besides the SDP not to lose seats in this election.
When negotiations are concluded and a new cabinet formed – a process that could take six weeks – the leader of the largest party is typically named as prime minister, and steps down as Speaker of Parliament. At that point, a new Speaker is elected, who generally represents the second-largest party in the legislature, in this case the Finns Party. In 2019, the new government did not take office until 6 June.
Sanna Marin (SDP) formally stepped down as PM last week, and said she would not join the next government or seek re-election as party chair. Her government remains in office as a caretaker cabinet until the new government is sworn in, but does not make any political decisions.
Cabinet feelers begin after Niinistö opens session
In the meantime, President Sauli Niinistö formally opens the legislative term on Thursday. After the opening ceremony, representatives of all the parliamentary groups meet to choose someone to lead the exploratory phase of government talks, who is almost always the chair of the largest party, i.e. Orpo.
After preliminary talks, the premier-apparent chooses which parties will enter actual government negotiations – when each party must weigh how many of its core principles and goals it is willing to compromise on to earn a berth in government, or whether to walk away and join the opposition.
With deep differences on fiscal and tax policy, immigration, language policy, the EU and the green transition between the three big parties, and many more with the smaller parties, Orpo faces a difficult challenge to cobble together a workable coalition – preferably one with a durable majority of at least 110 seats in the 200-member legislature.