Green League - History

History

The party was founded February 28, 1987, and registered as a political party the next year. Political activity had begun already in the early 1980s, when environmental activists, feminists and other active groups began to campaign on Green issues in Finland. In 1995 it was the first European Green party to be part of a state-level Cabinet.

The party was founded as a popular movement, and thus retains the descriptor liitto, "league". Initially, there was much resistance within the movement against the founding of a political party, motivated by Robert Michels' iron law of oligarchy, which claims that movements inevitably degenerate into oligarchies when they create a formal organization. The party still especially stresses openness and democratic decision-making. The liitto was later dropped from the Finnish and Swedish names in advertisements; the official name remains.

The first two parliamentary representatives were elected even before the registration, in the elections of 1983. These were the first independent representatives in the Finnish parliament. In 1987 the number of seats rose to four, and in 1991 to ten.

About half of Green were against joining the European Union in 1994. Later, polls showed that most Greens were anti-Eurozone. The party heads declined to fight against euro adoption.

In the 1995 election the Green League received a total of nine seats (out of 200), joined the coalition-cabinet led by the Social Democrats, and Pekka Haavisto became the minister of Environment and Development Aid, thus becoming the first green minister in Europe. The Green League received 7.3% of the vote, and gained two additional seats in 1999, raising the total to 11. The Greens continued in the next coalition-cabinet, but resigned in protest on May 26, 2002, after the cabinet's decision to allow the construction of a new nuclear plant was accepted in the parliament. In 2003 the Green League received 8.0% of the vote, giving a total of 14 seats. They increased their seats to 15 in 2007 elections when they received 8.5%. In the 2011 election, however, the party lost five seats.

As of the 2009 elections, two of the thirteen Finnish representatives in the European Parliament are Green: Satu Hassi and Heidi Hautala.

At the municipal level, Greens are an important factor in the largest cities of Finland. In the municipal election of 2008 the Greens had 8.9% of the vote; the vote share was considerably higher in Helsinki (the capital), where the Greens became were the second largest party with 23.2% of the vote. In several other cities the Greens achieved the position of the third largest party. Its weak spot is the rural countryside, particularly municipalities experiencing strong outward migration.

A 2012 study indicated that the Greens have an especially strong support among journalists, among whom they are the most popular party.

The Federation of Green Youth and Students is the Green League's youth organisation.