Government > Leaders Stats: compare key data on Finland & Iceland

SHARE TWEET EMBED

Select year 2013 2014

•  

STAT	Finland	Iceland	HISTORY
Head of state > Term limit for head of state	6 Ranked 25th. 50% more than Iceland	4 Ranked 119th.
President	Sauli Niinisto	Olafur Ragnar Grimsson
President > Profile	<p>Sauli Niinisto won the presidential election of February 2012 to become the country&#039;s first conservative head of state in five decades.</p> <p>He is the first president from the conservative National Coalition Party since 1956, and the first in 30 years from a party other than the Social Democrats.</p> <p>The victory of the pro-Europe politician suggested to observers that voters wanted to keep the country in the eurozone despite misgivings over European Union bailouts.</p> <p>Mr Niinisto is credited with leading Finland&#039;s economy towards growth following the collapse of the Soviet Union, during his tenure as finance minister from 1996 to 2001.</p> <p>Finland&#039;s president has a largely ceremonial role with fewer powers now than in previous decades, and is not directly involved in daily politics. However, the head of state is seen as an important shaper of public opinion, takes the lead on non-EU matters of foreign policy and plays a role as a &quot;brand ambassador&quot; of Finland overseas.</p> <p>Mr Niinisto succeeded President Tarja Halonen, who was elected as the country&#039;s first female president in 2000 and re-elected in 2006.</p>	<p>Mr Grimsson was re-elected president in 2012 for a record fifth term, having first been elected in 1996.</p> <p>An academic political scientist by profession who studied at the University of Manchester in England, Olafur Ragnar Grimsson was elected to parliament for the left-wing People&#039;s Alliance in 1978 and served as finance minister in a coalition government in 1988-1991. </p> <p>He often speaks out on controversial issues, and his relations with the conservative Independence Party - the dominant party in Icelandic politics until 2009 - has been uneasy. </p> <p>Mr Grimsson was the first president to use his right to put a bill to a national referendum in 2004, prompting the government to withdraw a proposal that would have set up an official committee to police freedom of speech.</p> <p>He later used the same power successfully twice - in 2010 and 2011 - to veto a government plan to repay British and Dutch investors over the collapse of the Icelandic banking system.</p> <p>He has been a vocal critic of the international response to Iceland&#039;s financial crisis, and is a campaigner for greater international action on climate change.</p>
President > Summary	President Sauli Niinisto is credited with leading the economy towards growth in the 1990s	President Grimsson often speaks out on controversial issues
Prime minister	Jyrki Katainen	Sigmundur David Gunnlaugsson
Prime minister > Profile	<p>Mr Katainen&#039;s conservative National Coalition Party emerged as the largest single group in parliament in the April 2011 elections.</p><p>He formed a grand coalition in June with six other parties from the left and centre, including the Social Democrats.</p> <p>The new opposition is the populist True Finns party, which refused to join the government in protest at its support for a bailout for Portugal during the debt crisis.</p> <p>Born in 1971, Mr Katainen worked as a teacher before being elected a councillor in 1993. He entered parliament in 1999 and became party leader in 2004.</p> <p>He served as deputy prime minister and finance minister in the previous two Centre-Party-led coalition governments between 2007 and 2011.</p>	<p>Mr Gunnlaugsson became prime minister in May 2013 following elections in April in which his centre-right Progressive Party and the conservative Independence Party of Bjarni Benediktsson both won 19 seats in the 63-seat parliament or Althing.</p> <p>The two parties formed a coalition after the election, taking over power from the Social Democrats, who suffered the worst defeat of any ruling party since Iceland gained independence from Denmark in 1944.</p> <p>An Oxford-educated former journalist, Mr Gunnlaugsson belongs to a new breed of politicians who emerged after Iceland&#039;s 2008 financial crisis, and his elevation to the premiership marks a generational shift in the Icelandic government. His predecessor, Johanna Sigurdardottir, was 70 at the time of the election, while Mr Gunnlaugsson, aged 38 when he took office, became one of the youngest serving heads of government in the world.</p> <p>The Progressive-Independence centre-right coalition came to power five years after the spectacular banking collapse of 2008 plunged Iceland into crisis and brought down the Independence Party-led government of Geir Haarde.</p> <p>Although Ms Sigurdardottir&#039;s Social Democrat government, which took over in 2009, had succeeded in stabilising the economy and returning Iceland to modest growth, many Icelanders continued to suffer the after-effects of the crisis. Real wages are still far below their pre-crisis levels, and household debt remains crippling.</p> <p>Iceland applied to join the EU in 2009, in the immediate aftermath of the banking collapse, when bloc membership was seen by many as offering the country a way out of its economic woes. However, the subsequent economic turbulence in the rest of Europe led many Icelanders to question the benefits of EU membership.</p> <p>Fishing is one of the island nation&#039;s biggest resources, and a majority of the population is opposed to the introduction of the EU&#039;s common policies on fishing.</p> <p>Mr Gunnlaugsson is an EU sceptic who believes that Iceland has little to gain in joining the bloc. Even before being sworn in as prime minister, he said that the coalition would freeze the already stalled talks on Iceland&#039;s EU membership and would hold a referendum on the issue.</p> <p>Sigmundur David Gunnlaugsson became the leader of the Progressive Party in January 2009 and was elected to the Althing in the 2009 parliamentary election.</p>
Prime minister > Summary	Prime Minister Jyrki Katainen is a former teacher	Mr Gunnlaugsson belongs to a new generation of Icelandic politicians

15 30 60 All

APA MLA MHRA CSE AMA Chicago Bluebook Bluebook/JOLT Citation