Sauli Niinistö

Sauli Niinistö (born August 24, 1948, Salo, Finland) is a Finnish lawyer and politician who became Finland’s first conservative head of state since the 1950s when he was elected president in 2012. He easily won reelection in 2018 and oversaw the accession of Finland to NATO in 2023.

After earning a law degree from the University of Turku in 1974, Niinistö worked briefly as a rural police chief before establishing his own law practice (1978–88) and serving as an assistant judge for an appellate court (1976–88). He entered politics in 1977 with a seat on the city council of his birthplace, Salo, which he held until 1992.

In 1987 he was elected to the Eduskunta (Finland’s parliament) as a member of the conservative National Coalition Party (NCP). He served in parliament from 1987 to 2003 and was the chairman of the NCP from 1994 to 2001. In 1995 his wife of some 20 years was killed in an automobile crash, leaving Niinistö the single parent of two sons, an experience he wrote about movingly in the book Viiden vuoden yksinäisyys (2005; “Five Years of Solitude”). When the NCP joined the coalition government led by Paavo Lipponen of the Social Democratic Party, Niinistö became deputy prime minister (1995–2001) and served briefly as the minister of justice (1995–96) before helping to guide Finland through tough economic times and into the euro zone in 2002 as minister of finance (1996–2003). During that period he also was chairman of the European Democrat Union (1998–2002), a consortium of conservative political parties from across Europe. Calamity befell Niinistö again when he and his sons were caught in (but survived) the Indian Ocean tsunami of 2004 that devastated Thailand during their visit to that country.

Discover the fascinating events that shaped the world, straight from our editors.

SIGN UP

By clicking “Sign Up”, you consent to the Britannica Privacy Policy and Terms of Use.

Having rejected efforts to get him to run for president in 2000, he became the NCP’s presidential candidate in 2006 but lost narrowly to incumbent Tarja Halonen. From 2003 to 2007 he was vice president of the Luxembourg-based European Investment Bank. Niinistö reentered parliament in 2007 and was chosen as its speaker (2007–11). In 2009 he married Jenni Elina Haukio, an NCP spokesperson, and became the chairman of the Football (soccer) Association of Finland (2009–12).

As the NCP’s candidate to replace Halonen (who was constitutionally prohibited from seeking a third term) as president in 2012, Niinistö finished at the top of an eight-candidate field in the first round of voting with 37 percent (not enough to prevent a runoff). Notably failing to advance to the second round was Timo Soini, the candidate of The Finns (True Finns) party, which had made big advances in the 2011 parliamentary elections, capturing nearly one-fifth of the vote. Both Niinistö and his runoff opponent, Pekka Haavisto of the Green League, the country’s first openly gay presidential candidate, were strong supporters of the European Union. The electorate’s preference of them over candidates who opposed EU involvement seemed to indicate that some of the public’s furor over Finland’s financial burden in the bailouts of those countries suffering most from the euro-zone debt crisis was diminishing. In the second round, Niinistö, with his reputation as a pragmatist and sound steward of the economy, took nearly 63 percent of the vote to Haavisto’s 37 percent to become Finland’s 12th president. Niinistö comfortably won reelection in 2018, capturing more than 60 percent of the vote in the first round and avoiding the need for a runoff. Prevented from running for a third term because of term limits, Niinistö was succeeded by former prime minister Alexander Stubb in 2024.