The European Parliament (EP) is one of the legislative bodies of the European Union and one of its seven institutions. Together with the Council of the European Union, it adopts European legislation, following a proposal by the European Commission. The Parliament is composed of 705 members (MEPs). It represents the second-largest democratic electorate in the world, with an electorate of 375 million eligible voters in 2009.
Yuri Vladimirovich Andropov was a Soviet politician who was the sixth paramount leader of the Soviet Union and the fourth General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. After Leonid Brezhnev's 18-year rule, Andropov served in the post from 1982 until his death in 1984.
The Politics of Azerbaijan takes places an authoritarian system where elections are not free and fair, political opponents are repressed, civil rights are limited, human rights abuses are widespread, corruption is rampant, and power is concentrated in the hands of President Ilham Aliyev and his extended family.
Nils Ole Hilmer Torvalds is a Finnish politician who has been a Member of the European Parliament (MEP) since 2012. He is a member of the Swedish People's Party of Finland, part of the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe.
The National Coalition Party is a liberal-conservative political party in Finland.
Heidi Anneli Hautala is a Finnish politician and Member of the European Parliament (MEP) from Finland. She is a member of the Green League, part of the European Green Party.
Sini Maaria Suvi-Anne Siimes is a former chair of the Finnish Left Alliance. She quit the party in 2006 because she did not want to support the party's former taistoists.
Cai-Göran Alexander Stubb is a Finnish politician who served as Prime Minister of Finland from 2014 to 2015. He rose to politics as a researcher specialized in the affairs of the European Union and was elected to the European Parliament in 2004 as a member of the National Coalition Party. In 2008, Stubb was appointed as Minister for Foreign Affairs following a scandal surrounding his predecessor, Ilkka Kanerva. In 2011 Stubb stood for election to the Finnish Parliament for the first time and was elected MP with the second highest vote count in the election, which led to Stubb becoming the Minister for Europe and Foreign Trade in Jyrki Katainen's cabinet.
The Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) is the parliamentary arm of the Council of Europe, a 46-nation international organisation dedicated to upholding human rights, democracy and the rule of law.
Karin Ståhl Woldseth is a Norwegian politician representing the Progress Party. She was a representative of Hordaland in the Storting until 2013 and was first elected in 2001.
The Iraq leak is a series of events that began on 6 March 2003 from a statement given by Anneli Jäätteenmäki, leader of the Finnish Centre Party, in a televised election debate prior to the 2003 parliamentary election. Jäätteenmäki accused Paavo Lipponen, the then Prime Minister of Finland, of attaching Finland to George W. Bush's 'coalition of the willing' that was in preparation for the 2003 war in Iraq. Lipponen had visited Washington on 9 December 2002.
The "Mitrokhin Archive" is a collection of handwritten notes, primary sources and official documents which were secretly made, smuggled, and hidden by the KGB archivist Vasili Mitrokhin during the thirty years in which he served as a KGB archivist in the foreign intelligence service and the First Chief Directorate. When he defected to the United Kingdom in 1992, he brought the archive with him, in six full trunks. His defection was not officially announced until 1999.
Kimmo Kiljunen is a Finnish author and politician of the Social Democratic Party. He served in the Finnish parliament from 1995 to 2011. He was a member of the Parliament's Grand Committee and the Committee for Foreign Affairs. He also served as the chairman of the Vantaa city council.
Axel Eduard Fischer is a German politician. He is a member of the CDU and has been a member of the German parliament from 1998 to October 2021, representing Karlsruhe-Land since 2002.
Adrian Severin is a Romanian politician and former Member of the European Parliament.
Terttu Savola is a Finnish politician. She is the chairperson of the For the Poor party, a member of the council of the city of Espoo, the ambassador for human rights and children's rights in the Finnish United Nations alliance, and a lecturer in the Finnish Refugee Help Association.
Finland's overall corruption is relatively low, according to public opinion and global indexes and standards. The 2022 Corruption Perceptions Index released by Transparency International scored Finland at 87 on a scale from 0 to 100. When ranked by score, Finland shared second place with New Zealand among the 180 countries in the Index, where the country or countries ranked first are perceived to have the most honest public sector. For comparison, the best score was 90, the worst score was 12 and the average was 43.
Communist symbols have been banned, in part or in whole, by a number of the world's countries. As part of a broader process of decommunization, these bans have mostly been proposed or implemented in countries that belonged to the Eastern Bloc during the Cold War, including some post-Soviet states. In some countries, the bans also extend to prohibit the propagation of communism in any form, with varying punishments applied to violators. Though the bans imposed by these countries nominally target the communist ideology, they may be accompanied by popular anti-leftist sentiment and therefore a de facto ban on all leftist philosophies, such as socialism, while not explicitly passing legislation to ban them.
Laura Huhtasaari is a Finnish politician and teacher. As a member of the Finns Party, she has represented Satakunta in the Parliament of Finland from April 2015 to July 2019. She was the Finns Party candidate for the 2018 Finnish presidential election. In 2019 Huhtasaari was elected to the European Parliament with 92,760 votes
Georg Carl Casimir Ehrnrooth was a Finnish politician and lawyer. He was a member of the Parliament for Helsinki from 1958 to 1979 and again from 1983 to 1987. He initially represented the Swedish People's Party of Finland but in 1973 he left the party and formed a new political party called the Constitutional People's Party, later known as the Constitutional Right Party. He served as its leader from 1974 to 1992.
