Erkki Tuomioja

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Erkki Tuomioja

Erkki Sakari Tuomioja (born 1 July 1946) is the Minister for Foreign Affairs of Finland (since 2000). He is regarded to be one of the most widely read politicians still active on the political stage in Finland.

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. At one point Tuomioja dated current Finnish president Tarja Halonen.

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 communist activist.

Tuomioja is Master of Social Sciences 1971, Master of Science in Economics and Business Administration 1974 from the Helsinki School of Economics), Licentiate in Social Sciences 1980, and Doctor in Social Sciences 1996 from the University of Helsinki. In addition to Finnish, he speaks Swedish, English, French and German.

Tuomioja has been a member of Parliament of Finland 1970–1979 and 1991–. He was Minister of Trade and Industry in Lipponen's 2nd government, and rose to be Minister of Foreign Affairs after Tarja Halonen was elected the President 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 at 25 November 1968.

Tuomioja is author of several books. His A Delicate Shade of Pink about his grandmother Hella Wuolijoki and her sister Salme Pekkala won Non-Fiction Finlandia Prize in 2006. The book was originally written in English and translated to Finnish as Häivähdys punaista.

[edit] EU Presidency

As Finland holds the rotating EU Presidency in the second half of 2006, Tuomioja has 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.