41 Facts About Heidi Hautala

Heidi Anneli Hautala was born on 14 November 1955 and is a Finnish politician and Member of the European Parliament from Finland.

Heidi Hautala is a member of the Green League, part of the European Green Party.

Heidi Hautala is currently a Member of the European Parliament for the fifth time.

Heidi Hautala has been the Vice-President of the European Parliament since 2017.

Heidi Hautala served as minister for international development and ownership steering issues in Jyrki Katainen's cabinet.

Heidi Hautala's father was a high-ranking war-hero who later went on to become one of the region's most powerful bankers.

Heidi Hautala speaks Finnish, English, Swedish, German, French and some Russian.

Heidi Hautala was the leader of the Finnish Green Party from 1987 to 1991, and a presidential candidate in 2000 and 2006.

Heidi Hautala was a member of the national parliament from 1991 to 1995.

The so-called "Heidi Hautala case" set a precedent in European law for access to documents.

In 2002, Heidi Hautala led a campaign for the European Parliament to set up a public register of members' assistants.

Between 2002 and 2003, Heidi Hautala was the president of the European Parliament Intergroup on Public Health.

Heidi Hautala returned to the national Parliament in the elections of 2003.

Heidi Hautala was the chair of the Administrative Council of Neste Oil, a Finnish oil refining and marketing company producing mainly transportation fuels and other refined petroleum products.

In 2009, Heidi Hautala was re-elected to the European Parliament, where she served as chair of the Subcommittee on Human Rights and as member of the Committee on Foreign Affairs.

Heidi Hautala is a signatory of the 2010 Declaration on Crimes of Communism, a patron of its preceding conference, and was a member of the Reconciliation of European Histories Group as an MEP.

Heidi Hautala was nominated the minister of international development and state ownership to Jyrki Katainen's government in 2011.

In 2013 it emerged Heidi Hautala had hired cleaning lady and repair work without taking care of the employer payments.

Heidi Hautala agreed to pay the contributions and apologised for her actions, and resigned from the ministerial working group against the informal economy.

Heidi Hautala resigned from her development and state ownership steering minister position in October 2013 amidst of allegations of abuse of power.

Heidi Hautala's office had recommended that the company withdraw its criminal complaint against Greenpeace, and threatened to fire the management in case that they disobliged.

When Iltalehti first broke the story, Heidi Hautala initially offered a different account of the events, denying that her office had pressured the company.

Heidi Hautala eventually stated that she could no longer work as a minister, because she had been inaccurate and remembered things incorrectly.

Heidi Hautala had made comments in an open support of Greenpeace activists detained in Russia under piracy charges, criticising Russia of "disproportionately tough measures" against the members of the NGO.

Heidi Hautala considered having been a target of the union activists because of lay offs due to sectoral reforms.

Heidi Hautala returned to the European Parliament following the 2014 elections.

Heidi Hautala has since been a member of the Committee on Development, Committee on Legal Affairs and Committee on International Trade as well as substitute member of the Committee on Budgets.

Heidi Hautala was a co-president of the Euronest Parliamentary Assembly, and the chair of European Parliament delegation to the Euronest from 4 September 2014 to 1 February 2017.

Heidi Hautala was a member of the European Parliament Intergroup on Western Sahara, several international delegations and the European Parliament Intergroup on the Welfare and Conservation of Animals.

In 2016, Heidi Hautala was appointed by Erik Solheim, the Chairman of the Development Assistance Committee, to serve on the High Level Panel on the Future of the Development Assistance Committee under the leadership of Mary Robinson.

Heidi Hautala has opposed using development policy mechanisms as a basis for military intervention under EU umbrella, denouncing a weak legal basis for the move.

On trade, Heidi Hautala has proposed to curb the global trade of illegal timber to prevent deforestation, asked the European Commission to introduce legislation to establish human rights due diligence requirements for multinational EU companies to respect human rights and prevent incidents such as Rana Plaza.

In October 2017, Heidi Hautala was appointed as the Vice President of the European Parliament until summer 2019, becoming the third Finn to hold the position.

Heidi Hautala serves this term as a Member of the Committee on International Trade and of the Subcommittee on Human Rights.

Heidi Hautala serve as a Substitute Member of the Committee on Legal Affairs.

Heidi Hautala was elected as Vice-President of the European Parliament in October 2017 and re-elected to this office in 2019.

Heidi Hautala is the founder of the European Parliament working group for Responsible Business Conduct, which involves a number of stakeholders and MEPs from different political groups.

In September 2022, Heidi Hautala was the recipient of the People's Choice: Outstanding Achievement in Public Service Award at The Parliament Magazine's annual MEP Awards.

The nervous reaction to Ms Heidi Hautala's remarks has provided a faint echo of the self-censorship of the Soviet era, when the term "Finlandisation" was coined to describe countries that quietly tailored their politics and policies to suit Moscow.

Heidi Hautala has been in a relationship with a German researcher Carlo Jordan, and was considered close to Russian film director Andrei Nekrasov, a vocal critic of Putin before beginning to produce Russian-friendly propaganda.

Heidi Hautala subsequently voted for a motion calling on a restricted use of the EU Magnistky act to direct participation, ruling out sanctions for any one in directly responsible.