Mika Lintilä
Mika Tapani Lintilä (born 15 April 1966) is a Finnish politician currently serving as Minister of Economic Affairs since 2019. A member of the Centre Party, he has been a Member of Parliament (MP) since 1999. Lintilä has formerly served as Minister of Economic Affairs in the Sipilä Cabinet from 2016 to 2019 and as Minister of Finance and Deputy Prime Minister of Finland in the Rinne Cabinet in 2019. Early life and education. Lintilä is the son of the Centre Party MP Aaro Lintilä. He holds a Bachelor of Administrative Sciences from Tampere University. Political career. Member  of the Finnish Parliament, 1999–present. Lintilä has been serving as a member of the Finnish Parliament since the 1999 elections. He has since served on a variety of committees, including the following: In addition to his committee assignments, Lintilä has been a deputy member of the Finnish Delegation to the Nordic Council (since 1999) and a full member of the delegation to the Inter-Parliamentary Union (since 2015). Minister of Economic Affairs, 2016–2019. On 27 October 2016, Lintilä was elected within the Centre Party to follow Olli Rehn as a Minister of Economic Affairs starting 29 December 2016. During  his time in office, Finland's center-right government sold stakes in oil refiner and biofuel company Neste while also strengthening national influence over the telecom network gear maker Nokia. Minister of Finance, 2019. Following the 2019 national elections, the Centre Party named Mika Lintilä as its candidate for the post of finance minister in the newly formed, centre-left coalition government led by Prime Minister Antti Rinne of the Social Democrats. In this capacity, he chaired the meetings of the Economic and Financial Affairs Council when Finland held the rotating presidency of the Council of the European Union in  2019. After the collapse of the Rinne Cabinet, the leader of the Center Party Katri Kulmuni took the seat of the Minister of Finance in the following Marin Cabinet, while Lintilä was given the portfolio of the Minister of Economic Affairs Political positions. In response to the 2019 Amazon rainforest wildfires, Lintilä demanded publicly that the European Union should block imports of beef from Brazil, and also consider a suspension of soybeans import to put pressure on the government of President Jair Bolsonaro to counter the fires.