Governments and ministers since 1917

On this page, you can browse information about the governments of Finland by name, term, number of days in office or Prime Minister’s political party and see whether the government was a majority, minority or caretaker government. Ministers can be organised by name, political party and total number of days as minister. Information is available for all governments of Finland since it gained independence.

Minister for Foreign Affairs Elina Valtonen

The National Coalition Party

The Ministry for Foreign Affairs

The Minister for Foreign Affairs heads the Ministry for Foreign Affairs and is responsible for handling matters falling under the administrative branch of the Foreign Ministry, but excluding matters that fall under the responsibility of the other ministers of the Foreign Ministry.

Profile

Born on 23 October 1981 in Helsinki, Elina Valtonen is a fourth-term Member of Parliament, deputy chair of the National Coalition Party and mother of two children.

In Parliament, she has served as vice chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee and in the Defence Committee, Finance Committee and Grand Committee. Valtonen has chaired the Finnish delegation to the NATO Parliamentary Assembly and served as deputy member of the Finnish Delegation to the Council of Europe.

Before entering politics, Valtonen worked abroad in the private sector in various countries, including for ten years in the financial sector in Copenhagen and London. A former computer programmer, she has been involved in setting up several growth companies.

Valtonen's first book Vapauden voitto (‘Freedom’s Victory’, Otava 2018) was the most sold non-fiction book in Finland for several weeks. In addition to Finnish, Valtonen speaks Swedish, English, German and French.