In the presidential elections in 2000, the Social Democratic Foreign Minister Tarja Kaarina Halonen was able to prevail over Aho on February 6 with 51.6% of the vote; With halons, a woman took up the post of head of state for the first time in Finland on March 1, 2000 (re-elected in 2006).
After a parliamentary resolution in May 2002 on the expansion of Finnish nuclear power generation, the Greens left the government coalition. From the Reichstag elections of March 16, 2003, the KESK emerged as the strongest force again after a long time. Its chairman, A. Jäätteenmäki , formed a coalition cabinet with the SDP and the SFP / RKP (“Rote Erde” government, in office since April 2003). Because of a political affair (use of secret documents about the Finnish position in the Iraq conflict during the election campaign) Jäätteenmäki resigned in June 2003 and also relinquished the leadership of the KESK. Then the previous Defense Minister M. T. Vanhanen (also KESK) took over the leadership of the governing coalition.
In the local elections on October 24, 2004, the SDP (led by Lipponen until 2005) became the strongest party, followed by the KESK and the KOK. In the parliamentary elections on March 18, 2007, the KESK won just ahead of the KOK and the SDP. The two bourgeois parties then formed a four-party coalition with the SFP / RKP and the Greens under M. T. Vanhanen; the SDP went into opposition. In 2008, as one of countries starting with letter F according to Countryaah, Finland was rocked by an election donation scandal; many parliamentarians and several ministers had provided incomplete information on the funding of their campaigns for the 2007 general election. Against the background of the critical public debate about the donation affair, Vanhanen resigned At the end of 2009 he withdrew from the KESK chairmanship for health reasons. In 2010 he also gave up the post of head of government. Successor in both offices was M. Kiviniemi . In 2009 Finland fell into a severe recession due to the global economic crisis. a. was due to the decline in exports. A slight upturn was recorded in 2010. Parliamentary elections took place on April 17, 2011, in which the KOK, under the leadership of J. Katainen , was able to win the most seats.
Behind the Social Democrats, the right-wing populist party »True Finns« (PS) advanced to become the third strongest parliamentary force as an advocate of a course critical of the EU or the euro. On June 22nd, 2011 the parliament elected J. Katainen as the new head of government at the head of a six-party coalition (KOK, SDP, VAS, VIHR, SFP, KD). The Finnish parliament approved the expanded euro rescue package at the end of September 2011. Finland was the only euro country that had previously insisted on collateral. In the presidential elections in January / February 2012, S. Niinistö (KOK) won the second ballot with 62.6% of the votes against Pekka Haavisto (* 1958, VIHR), which won 37.4% of the vote. In a referendum in 2013, over 50,000 Finns voted for the abolition of the previously compulsory Swedish lessons. In parliament, however, there was no majority for the project. In March 2014, the VAS ministers withdrew from the government after disputes over social policy. In connection with European political ambitions, J. Katainen announced his resignation in April 2014. In the European elections on May 25, 2014, the KOK asserted itself as the strongest force ahead of the KESK, despite slight losses. The right-wing populist PS established itself as the third strongest force with 12.9%. On June 23, 2014 the parliament elected A. Stubb to succeed Katainen the new head of government. He took office on June 24, 2014. Previously, Stubb had already taken over the party leadership of the KOK from Katainen. Under Stubb, the approval of a new nuclear power plant of a Finnish-Russian energy consortium in northern Finland, which was already disputed in the government under Katainen, was granted in September 2014, whereupon the Green Bund (VIHR) also left the coalition. As a result, the government only had a wafer-thin majority of one vote in parliament. On December 7, 2014, the parliament approved the construction of the power plant.
The centrist KESK under the leadership of J. Sipilä emerged victorious from the parliamentary elections on April 19, 2015. It won 49 of the 200 parliamentary seats (2011: 35 seats). The Party of Finns (PS) won 38 seats (2011: 39). The KOK, led by Prime Minister Stubb, recorded losses and only had 37 seats (2011: 44). J. Sipilä became the new Prime Minister at the head of a center-right coalition made up of KESK, KOK and PS. In the summer of 2016, the government decided to start a pilot project on unconditional basic income in view of the unsatisfactory employment situation. A referendum for Finland to leave the euro zone had already received the necessary support from 50,000 eligible voters in November 2015. After checking the signatures, the government was forced to discuss this matter in parliament in 2016. In order to stop the influx of refugees via the so-called ice route, Finland and Russia agreed strict entry restrictions at their common border in March 2016. In a government white paper on foreign and security policy presented in mid-June 2016, the option of applying for NATO membership was kept open. However, such a step did not meet with popular approval. In the presidential election on January 28, 2018, S. Niinistö received the mandate for a second term with 62.7% of the votes.
At the beginning of March 2019, the Sipilä cabinet resigned after the social and care reform failed due to a lack of a parliamentary majority. In the parliamentary elections on April 14, 2019 five weeks later, the Social Democrats under their chairman Antti Rinne (* 1962) were the strongest party with 40 out of 200 parliamentary seats, closely followed by the right-wing populist party »The Finns«, which had 39 seats. The National Collection Party took third place with 38 seats. The Liberal Center Party of Prime Minister Sipilä recorded heavy losses and came in fourth with 31 seats. Although the Greens and the left alliance also gained votes, a left alliance did not have a majority. Antti Rinne will be elected Prime Minister in June 2019. After six months in government office, Prime Minister Rinne was enough submitted his resignation on December 3, 2019 under pressure from the Center Party. The resignation enabled the Social Democrats to continue government work in the five-party coalition. The background to the coalition crisis was the dispute over collective bargaining and employment contracts at Posti, the state-owned postal service company. The former trade unionist Rinne took the side of the workers, against contract shopping and the tactics of postponing employment contracts, whereupon the Center Party expressed its distrust in him. The social democrat Sanna Marin was elected as the next head of government, the cabinet and government program were continued.
