🇫🇮Finland

Finland is a parliamentary republic in Northern Europe and a European Union member since 1995, which joined NATO in April 2023 after Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine. The 200-seat unicameral parliament, the Eduskunta, is elected by open-list proportional representation (d'Hondt method) across 13 electoral districts, with the autonomous Åland Islands electing one additional member; there is no statutory threshold, though the effective threshold rises in smaller districts. The prime minister leads the government and is drawn from the largest parliamentary bloc, while the president — directly elected for a six-year term by a two-round majority system — leads foreign and security policy in cooperation with the cabinet. Finnish politics is built around several roughly equal parties rather than a two-bloc system: the conservative National Coalition Party (Kokoomus), the Social Democrats (SDP), the agrarian-centrist Centre Party (Keskusta) and the national-conservative Finns Party (Perussuomalaiset) have all topped recent elections, supported by the Green League, the Left Alliance, the Swedish People's Party (RKP) and the Christian Democrats. Recent parliamentary contests have been extraordinarily close: the Centre Party won in 2015, the Social Democrats narrowly in 2019, and the National Coalition Party in 2023, after which Petteri Orpo formed a right-wing coalition with the Finns Party, RKP and the Christian Democrats. In the 2024 presidential election Alexander Stubb succeeded the long-serving Sauli Niinistö in the closest runoff in the history of Finland's direct presidential vote. Finland also elects representatives to the European Parliament and, at sub-national level, holds municipal elections (kuntavaalit) for its local councils and — since 2022 — county elections (aluevaalit) for the wellbeing services counties that run health and social care. Elections are administered by the Ministry of Justice and the results are compiled and published by Statistics Finland (Tilastokeskus, stat.fi). Finland consistently ranks among the world's strongest democracies and least corrupt states.