Olli Rehn, who is running for president backed by a voters' association as well as the Centre Party, has one of the most impressive resumes in Finnish and EU politics – yet for many in the Finnish public he remains a colourless figure, an economist detached from people's everyday concerns.
Rehn has held many influential posts during his 40-year career, shuttling frequently between Helsinki and Brussels on a journey from academia to international economic governance and back to domestic politics.
He has had the most powerful EU career of any Finnish official, rising to become deputy chair of the European Commission while serving as Commissioner for Economic and Monetary Affairs in 2010-14. That followed six years as Commissioner for Enlargement beginning in 2004.
After his decade on the Commission, Rehn served for a year each as a Member of the European Parliament and as Minister of Economic Affairs until 2016, when he became Governor of the Bank of Finland, all while remaining an aloof figure for most voters.
Last summer, he tried – twice – to make a joke about his reputation as a grey, white-haired technocrat, but that backfired, drawing accusations of insensitivity.
"I'm not grey, I'm an albino," Rehn said during a panel discussion in August. "It's a completely different matter. And if greyness refers to reliability, judgement and composure, then I don't think those are bad qualities at all for the president."
Rehn apologised after the Finnish Albinism Association called Rehn's remark "inappropriate."
By the time of an Yle interview in mid-December, Rehn had dropped the offensive reference but repeated the second part of the statement about grey representing "reliability, judgement and stability".
This is part of a series of profiles on candidates in the presidential election. Our really simple guide provides some essential information about the race to become Finland's next president.
Car parts and football
Most Finnish voters would likely be hard-pressed to come up with anything about Rehn's life away from politics besides that he is an avid football player.
He played in his late teens for a professional team in his native Mikkeli, eastern Finland. He did not return after his military conscription, but still plays on two teams at age 61.
Rehn's parents ran a car parts business, where he started working at age 12. His father was a self-made entrepreneur from a humble background, but Rehn followed more in the footsteps of his mother, Vuokko Rehn, a teacher and local Centre Party politician who served a term in Parliament in 1995-99.
Her son preceded her as an MP, having been elected to Parliament in 1991 after stints as deputy party chair and leader of the Centre's youth wing. He also earned a master's degree in political science from the University of Helsinki after studying economics, journalism and international relations in Minnesota.
After three years in Parliament, he was appointed as one of Finland's first Members of the European Parliament in 1995, a post he held for just one year. Rehn was voted out when Finland held its first European elections in 1996. That year, though, he earned a doctorate from Oxford with a dissertation on the economies of small European countries – which became his wheelhouse as economic affairs commissioner.
His first EU executive job was as chief of staff for Finland's first EU Commissioner, Erkki Liikanen (SDP) in 1998. Three years later, he sought the Centre Party leadership, but lost to Anneli Jäätteenmäki, who went on to endure a brief, scandal-ridden term as PM.
The following year, Rehn planned to run for Parliament again, but scrapped that plan after controversially defending his friend Alpo Rusi, who was falsely accused of espionage.
Rehn withdrew from politics, becoming a professor of political science at the University of Helsinki. His time in academia ended when Prime Minister Matti Vanhanen (Cen) asked him to become his special political assistant. Rehn did not stay in that post for long either, because he was named as an EU commissioner in 2004.
In the eye of the storm
As Commissioner for Economic and Monetary Affairs, Rehn was in the eye of the storm while handling the euro crisis. Greece was on the verge of bankruptcy and the Eurozone was in danger of breaking up.
Rehn's handling of the crisis and his role in enforcing austerity measures in several member states earned him both praise and criticism. It also exposed tensions between EU states, with Rehn seen as representing the tough, fiscally conservative stance of Northern Europe.
In 2014, Rehn ran for the European Parliament for the second time, this time becoming the Centre's vote magnet, attracting 70,000 votes.
But after just a year, Rehn returned to the Finnish Parliament, earning a rebuke from the Speaker of Parliament for opportunistic "election shopping". As an MP, Rehn got the nod as Minister of Economic Affairs from PM Juha Sipilä (Cen) in 2015.
In that cabinet post, he was immediately faced with difficult decisions, with the fate of the planned Fennovoima nuclear power plant hanging in the balance after a pull-out by its main German partner. Rehn, who had earlier opposed the project, did an about-face as minister.
In still-unexplained backroom manoeuvres, he apparently forced the state-owned energy company Fortum to also reverse its position and invest in the project, saving it at the last minute in partnership with the Kremlin-controlled Rosatom.
The beleaguered Fennovoima struggled on until February 2022, when the untenability of a multi-billion-euro, multi-decade Russian nuclear project in Finland finally became clear to all after Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
Rehn didn't stay on long as minister, either, being elected the following year to the board of the Bank of Finland.
Two years later, in 2018, President Sauli Niinistö appointed him as the governor of the central bank. As a presidential candidate, Rehn is on unpaid leave from that position.
In mid-September, Rehn became the first candidate in this election to gather the required 20,000 supporter cards to run as an independent, formally supported by a voters' association. Later that month, the Centre Party backed Rehn as its candidate for the election as well.
He says his campaign focuses on three main themes: management of Finland's foreign and security policy, crisis resilience and republican values.
As Rehn's lifelong involvement with the Centre Party suggests, his policy views are middle-of-the-road. On non-EU foreign policy, the main area of presidential power, he, like the other main candidates, sticks close to the moderate course laid out by Niinistö and other recent presidents.
In a Yle interview, Rehn criticised frontrunners Alexander Stubb (NCP) and Pekka Haavisto (Green) for, in his view, presenting an overly rosy view of Ukraine's prospects against the Russian attack, and arguing that Ukraine needs decisive long-term support from Europe and other western countries.
It remains to be seen whether Rehn's weighty experience in international negotiations and the highest echelons of domestic and European politics will convince voters despite his self-proclaimed 'grey' personality.
24.1: Corrected reference to Rosatom.
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