Finland had two strong candidates for the top job, but both qualified – This is how the race was messed up

The appointment of the European Ombudsman is one of the first tasks of the new EU Parliament elected in June.

Attorney general Tuomas Pöysti and Director General of the EU’s anti-fraud agency OLAF Ville Itälä were Finland’s two leading candidates for the top European position, i.e. the EU Ombudsman.

Famous Finnish candidates did not survive the first qualifying round of the competition.

In order to continue, the candidates should have received the support of at least 40 MEPs from the EU Parliament, so that there are Eurorepresentatives from at least two EU member states. There are a total of 15 Finnish MEPs in the 720-member EU Parliament, so in order to support the appointment, Pöysti and Itälä had to seek support from other countries’ MEPs as well.

A special episode

Chancellor of Justice Pöysti first had time to run as a candidate for the office of ombudsman and gather support from the EU Parliament.

According to Pöysti, he had support for his own candidacy from the Finnish government.

“As I understand it, it was,” says Pöysti.

However, the government has a limited weight in influencing the views of the members of the EU Parliament.

About a week before the deadline, Ville Itälä, an EU official with a coalition background, also registered for the competition.

He received the support of the leadership of the largest group in the parliament, the center-right EPP, for his candidacy.

The condition for EPP’s support was the group’s knowledge that the prime minister Petteri Orpo (kok) supports Itälä’s candidacy for ombudsman.

After promises of support from Orpo and the EPP leadership, Itälä started a few days of intense campaign for the votes of MEPs, but fell 13 votes short of the target of 40 votes by the deadline.

Pöysti also did not receive the required 40 MEP support by the deadline.

A gentleman’s agreement

Itälä and Pöysti had agreed between themselves that if one of them does not get the required number of votes, he can “donate” his own votes to the other candidate.

However, the transfer of support votes was not successful, so Pöysti and Itälä were eliminated from the competition.

According to the background discussions held by Kauppalehti, the reason for the duo’s failure was that the race was started with the tactic of two candidates.

Some also criticized the confused line of the Orpo (kok) government regarding who was Finland’s number one candidate for ombudsman, Pöysti or Itälä.

Despite their defeat, the candidates who qualified from the competition praise their “gentlemanship”.

“We were ready to help each other if the other had a chance to win,” Itälä says.

“We operate in a very gentlemanly cooperation with Ville Itälä, even though we were in a competitive position,” says Pöysti.

Pöysti, who was the first candidate in the competition, refuses to comment on what went wrong in the application process.

“There weren’t enough votes in the first round, there’s really nothing to comment on,” Pöysti replies.

Itälä, on the other hand, says that it came as a surprise to him that the MEPs could no longer give their support to more than one candidate this time, which made collecting MEP votes more challenging.

Pöysti refuses to comment on whether the loss in the European ombudsman competition upsets him.

“Usually if we go to elections, we start to struggle for success.”

“I am very motivated to work in my current position,” says Chancellor of Justice Pöysti.

Six candidates

We are currently living in a situation where six candidates are competing for the position of ombudsman. They are Teresa Anjinho, Emilio de Capitani, Marino Fardelli, Julia Laffrangue, Claudia Mahler and Reinier van Zuphen.

Portugal’s Anjinho is said to be the strongest in the race when the candidates will be heard in the EU Parliament’s Petitions Committee (PETI) on Tuesday.

After the hearings, the European Parliament will vote by majority vote on a new Ombudsman for the EU.