3 new ministers take over charges

The President on Friday appointed Jari Leppä as the Minister of Agriculture and Forestry, Antti Häkkänen as the Minister of Justice and Sampo Terho as the Minister for European Affairs, Culture and Sports, said an official press release.

The appointment of the new ministers and the changes in the division of duties mean that Kimmo Tiilikainen will remain in the government as Minister for Housing, Energy and the Environment, Jari Lindström as Minister of Employment and Sanni Grahn-Laasonen as Minister of Education.

The new ministers were sworn in at the beginning of the plenary session.

Earlier, each of the three ruling parties of the coalition government on April 28 chose a nominee to serve as the new ministers, as the cabinet is to expand to comprise 17 members.

The new Minister for Justice will be Antti Hakkanen, an MP from the Kansallinen Kokoomus (National Coalition Party). The 32-year-old lawyer will be the youngest in the cabinet.

Before elected to the Parliament in 2015, he had served as an aide to conservative cabinet members. Hakkanen has been considered as a value conservative close to the traditional line of the party.

In economic matters, he has underlined the balance of public economy.

The new Minister for Agriculture and Forestry Jari Leppä is a 57-year-old farmer and has served five terms in the Parliament for the Suomen Keskusta (Centre Party).

Leppä has been known as a hard working MP with a fairly low profile. He runs a farm with 70 cows in southeastern Finland. The land has been a property of his family since the 16th century.

The new Minister for Culture, Sports and European Affairs Sampo Terho, born in 1977, is a history graduate and worked in the Defense Ministry before entering politics.

Terho was elected to the European Parliament as a Perussuomalaiset (Finns Party) member in 2011 and to the Finnish Parliament in 2015. He is running for the chairmanship of the Finns Party.

He is critical of the EU. He is chairman of the Association of Finnish Identity, which promotes the position of the Finnish language and is critical of the compulsory teaching of Swedish, the second national language in Finland.