Yearbook 2006
Finland. According to
CountryAAH, President Tarja Halonen was re-elected in
January for a new term in office. However, she failed to
secure the victory in the first round and the election went
to a second round. There, former Social Democrat Halonen was
pitted against Conservative Socialist Party candidate Sauli
Niinistö. According to opinion polls, Halonen would win big
over Niinistö, but he managed to mobilize the bourgeois
voters surprisingly well. Halonen therefore won a tight
victory with 51.8% of the vote against Niinistö's 48.2%. On
the left, the criticism was harsh on the Social Democratic
campaign that was considered unsuccessful. Halonen won
despite the S campaign, it was called by the Left League
leader Suvi-Anne Siimes. At the same time, an internal
battle was going on within the Left League, where Suvi-Anne
Siimes pulled the shortest straw and was forced to resign in
March. She was referred to as a innovator.
 The victory in the Eurovision Song Contest in Athens in
May for the so-called monster group Lordi triggered unusual
cheer scenes in Finland. When Lordi arrived in Helsinki
after his success with "Hard Rock Hallelujah", close to
100,000 Finns gathered at the Market Square for the
acclaimed tributes to the rock musicians, who had received
harsh criticism for their challenging style before the
competition.
At the turn of the year, Finland took over the EU
Presidency and was forced, among other things, to deal with
the EU's problematic relationship with Russia. At the
informal EU summit in Lahti in October, President Vladimir
Putin was invited. In connection with the meeting, President
Halonen appealed to Putin to avoid the bloodshed in the
ongoing Russian-Georgian conflict. The meeting was held
shortly after the assassination of regime-critical Russian
journalist Anna Politkovskaya in Moscow, and Finnish Prime
Minister Matti Vanhanen raised the EU's concern over the
functioning of the Russian legal community.
Ahead of the formal EU-Russia summit at the end of
November in Helsinki, Vanhanen sought to pave the way for a
new economic and energy cooperation agreement between the
two major powers. Despite intense efforts, he encountered
resistance from Poland, which blocked the new negotiations
demanding that Russia lift its import ban on Polish food.
In the autumn, a Finnish study suggested that Finland
build a sixth nuclear reactor. The one-man investigation
that worked on the government's mission also found that more
domestic renewable energy and possibly an expansion of
hydropower is needed to ensure access to electricity. The
country's fifth nuclear reactor is under construction.
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