Alexander Stubb

Biography

Alexander Stubb was born in Helsinki in 1968 into a bilingual Swedish- and Finnish-speaking family. He finished high school in Florida and in Helsinki, did his military service, and went to Furman University in South Carolina on a golf scholarship, graduating in political science in 1993. He then studied French at the Sorbonne, took a master's at the College of Europe in Bruges and earned a doctorate at the London School of Economics in 1999 with a thesis on EU treaty negotiations.

He worked as a researcher for Finland's foreign ministry and the Academy of Finland, at Finland's EU representation in Brussels and as an adviser to Commission President Romano Prodi. Elected to the European Parliament for the National Coalition Party in 2004, he became foreign minister in 2008, chairing the OSCE that year during the Russo-Georgian War, and was minister for Europe and foreign trade from 2011.

In June 2014 he succeeded Jyrki Katainen as party leader and prime minister. After the 2015 election he served as finance minister under Juha Sipilä until he lost the party leadership to Petteri Orpo in 2016. He left parliament in 2017 to become a vice-president of the European Investment Bank, and in 2020 became director of the School of Transnational Governance at the European University Institute in Florence.

He won the 2024 presidential election, narrowly beating Pekka Haavisto in the run-off, and took office on 1 March 2024 as the first Swedish-speaking Finn elected to the post.