Timo Soini

Timo Juhani Soini (born 30 May 1962) is a Finnish politician who is the co-founder and former leader of the Finns Party. He served as Deputy Prime Minister of Finland from 2015 to 2017 and Minister of Foreign Affairs from 2015 to 2019.

He was elected as a member of the Espoo city council in 2000, and the Parliament of Finland in 2003. In the 2009 European Parliament election, he won a seat in the European Parliament with Finland's highest personal vote share (nearly 10% of all votes), becoming the first member of the Finns Party in the European Parliament. He was a member of the European Parliament from 2009 until 2011, when he returned to the Finnish Parliament.

In the 2011 parliamentary election, his party won 19.1% of the votes, which was described as "shocking" and "exceptional" by the Finnish media. Soini himself won the most votes of all candidates, leaving behind the Finnish Foreign Minister Alexander Stubb and the Minister of Finance Jyrki Katainen in their Uusimaa electoral district. Helsingin Sanomat concluded that "Timo Soini rewrote the electoral history books".

Soini has become one of the internationally best-known critics of European Union bailouts and safety mechanisms. Following the 2015 parliamentary election, his party joined a coalition government and Soini became Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs in May 2015. In March 2017, Soini announced that he would step down as Chair of the Finns Party in June 2017, causing a hotly contested leadership election. After the selection of Jussi Halla-aho as new party chairman – prompting a break between Prime Minister Juha Sipilä and the Finns Party – Soini declared his intention to form a new parliamentary group and remain in the government, causing a split in the party. Soini was subsequently expelled from the party along with the other defector MPs.

Soini did not take part in the 2019 parliamentary election and announced soon after the election that he was leaving politics behind.