Career
Vanhanen is the son of professor Tatu Vanhanen and Anni Tiihonen. He is an abstainer of alcohol and 2 meters tall.
He studied political science at the University of Helsinki, graduating as a Master of Social Sciences in 1989. He was chairman of the Centre Party Youth League from 1980 to 1983. He also served as a member of the Espoo City Council from 1981 to 1984. Vanhanen used to work as a journalist. He was an editor (1985–1988) and editor-in-chief (1988–1991) at the local newspaper Kehäsanomat. In a column in Suomenmaa (the Centre Party’s organ), he strongly condemned the Baltic Star pro-Estonian independence demonstration held in Helsinki in July 1985, calling the demonstration "provocative".
Vanhanen was elected to the Finnish Parliament (Eduskunta) in 1991. As a member of Parliament he was interested in ecological issues. For instance, Vanhanen spoke against the building of a fifth nuclear power plant in 1992, at the same time as serving on the board of electricity corporation Fortum. He served on the Parliamentary Environment Committee 1991–1995, and was chair of the Parliamentary Grand Committee 2000–2001. He was vice-chair of the Centre Party Parliamentary group 1994–2001, and Deputy Chairman of the Centre Party 2000–2003.
Another important topic for Vanhanen was Finland's foreign and security policy. As a specialist on the European Union he was a member of the European Union Constitutional Convention. There he criticized the president of the convention, former French president Valéry Giscard d'Estaing, as authoritarian. Vanhanen has said that he is unenthusiastic about European co-operation, and that he is an "EU pragmatist", so he may be considered a eurosceptic, especially when compared to his EU-enthusiast predecessor Paavo Lipponen.
Read more about this topic: Matti Vanhanen
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