Finland & Greece

Two European updates this week, which in their different ways illuminate the political choices faced by centre-right parties.

First Finland, which finally has a new government following April’s election, in which the incumbent Social Democrats lost their majority. In their place, as foreshadowed last month, is a four-party coalition of the National Coalition Party (centre-right), the True Finns (far right), the Swedish People’s Party (centrist) and the Christian Democrats (centre-right). National Coalition leader Petteri Orpo won a vote of confidence on Tuesday and has been sworn in as prime minister.

The new government has a clear majority, with 108 of the 200 seats in parliament. But it is controversial because of the inclusion of the True Finns (now often just called in English the “Finns Party”). They have been in government before, from 2015 to 2017, but that was before they made a turn to the hard right at their 2017 conference; in their current configuration they are bound to embarrass the new government in numerous ways – much as their counterpart EKRE did in neighboring Estonia in 2019-21.

In just one respect have the True Finns moderated: since the Russian invasion of Ukraine they have dropped their previous opposition to NATO, and have left the Eurosceptic bloc in the European Parliament to rejoin the more anti-Russian European Conservatives and Reformists group. Finland under the new government will maintain its strong support for Ukraine.

In that sense, Orpo can claim that he has stayed within the mainstream. He can also point to the fact that there was no route to a majority without the far right other than a grand coalition with the Social Democrats (not that that would have been particularly unusual for Finland). But it’s hard to avoid the impression that he has gained power by selling out his country’s progressive and democratic values.

In Greece, democracy is also at issue, but in a different way. Centre-right prime minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis did well at the last election, held a month ago; his party, New Democracy, increased its vote and finished just short of an absolute majority, with 146 of the 300 seats. He could have followed Finland’s lead and tried to negotiate a coalition with the far-right Greek Solution, which had 16 seats, or he could have made overtures to the centre-left PASOK with its 41 seats.

But Mitsotakis did neither of these things. Instead, knowing that no majority could be reached without New Democracy, he refused to attempt to form a new government, leading to a fresh election. It’s being held this Sunday.

Repeat elections aren’t new; Bulgaria held five in the space of two years. Greece itself held elections just a few weeks apart in 2012. This one, however, is different. It’s not a matter of Mitsotakis hoping that people will vote differently if given another opportunity: he expects a different result because the rules have changed, and he is the one who changed them.

The previous government, under the radical-left Syriza, legislated in 2016 to abolish the winner’s bonus, under which the party coming first received an additional allocation of seats that in most cases would give it a majority. That change came into effect only after an election had intervened, meaning that the election a month ago was the first to be held under the new rules – basically straight proportional representation with a 3% threshold.

But it’s also the last, because Mitsotakis in his first term re-instated the winner’s bonus, albeit in a slightly different form. That change in turn was delayed for a term, but since no government has been formed, that term has been only a month, not four years. And with the winner’s bonus in place, unless there is a big swing against New Democracy (which the polls are not showing), it will this time win a majority.

I find this appalling, made more so by the fact that the media seem completely relaxed about it. The point of delaying the application of changes to the electoral laws (unless they’re passed with a two-thirds majority) is to stop governments from fiddling the rules to their own benefit. By engineering a second election immediately after the first, Mitsotakis has circumvented that restriction, and is likely to govern with a majority despite the fact that almost 60% of the electorate voted against him.