Helsinki:

Former prime minister, triathlete and Europe enthusiast Alexander Stubb made a triumphant return to politics on Sunday after a seven-year hiatus, winning the Finnish presidency in Sunday’s election.

The former leader of the National Conservative Party ran for president because of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

“I can say realistically that before the war started, that was not a realistic consideration,” he said when he announced his candidacy in August. “When the motherland calls, you go.”

“I think one of the most important tasks of the next presidential term is trying to preserve the rules-based international system,” Stubb said.

After winning the election, Stubb said becoming president was “the greatest honor of my life.”

In Sunday’s runoff, 98% of the votes had been counted. Stubb received 51.7% of the vote. His opponent Pekka Haavisto admitted as much.

Party colleague Ilkka Kanerva was replaced in 2008 by then MEP Ilkka Kanerva, who was forced to resign over a series of text messages she sent to an erotic dancer. Ilkka Kanerva, as foreign minister, Stubb was accidentally thrust into the heart of Finnish politics.

After leaving Brussels, Stuab initially moved back to his childhood home in Helsinki and said he was probably the only foreign minister in the world to live with his father.

Stubb subsequently served as prime minister from 2014 to 2015.

NATO Core

The president-elect told Finnish media that as a new member of NATO, Finland should “go to the core of NATO and “produce security, not consume it.”

After Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, Finland abandoned decades of military non-alignment and applied to join the military alliance – although Stuab has been a long-time supporter of the NATO bid.

In his forties, Stubb took up triathlons and his passion for sport left its mark on the Foreign Office, with pastries and coffee replaced by fruit and health drinks.

However, the 55-year-old paused the race to focus on his presidential campaign.

During his tenure as prime minister, he came under attack in the media for wearing shorts to a press conference on the situation in Ukraine in 2014 and for acting as a human dart at a theme park.

According to Stuab himself, one of his biggest mistakes as prime minister was approving the construction of a nuclear power plant with Russia’s state-owned Rosatom.

His career hit a snag after his party finished second in the 2015 election and he moved to become finance minister.

He subsequently lost the leadership of his party to current Prime Minister Petri Orpo and left the Finnish parliament in 2017 to become Vice President of the European Investment Bank.

After losing the bid for the presidency of the European Commission in 2018, Stuab left politics and turned to academia, where he has spent the past three years as director of the School of Transnational Governance at the European University Institute and as a professor in Florence, Italy.

The father of two children, Stubb married Suzanne Innes-Stubb in 1998, now global head of compliance at elevator engineering company Kone.

She holds dual Finnish and British citizenship and will be Finland’s first foreign-born first lady.

After Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, Stubb became a popular commentator in foreign media, highlighting his prediction in 2008 that a war between Russia and Georgia would mark a turning point in foreign policy.

Stubb, who has lived in the United States, France, England, Belgium, Luxembourg and Italy, said he can negotiate with “excellent” Finnish, Swedish, English and French, as well as “good” German.

Taking office as president means that he will return to Finland again.

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