EU gets another female leader with 34-year-old Finnish PM

Appointment means all leaders of parties in Finland’s ruling coalition are women.

The European Union is about to get another female leader.

Little more than a week after Ursula von der Leyen took the reins of the European Commission, the rotating presidency of the Council of the EU will pass into the hands of 34-year-old Sanna Marin, who is set to become Finland's next prime minister.

Finland's governing Social Democrats nominated Marin, the current transport and communications minister, for the premiership on Sunday. The Finnish parliament will give her its official seal of approval on Tuesday, making her the world's youngest sitting prime minister — and one of only five female national leaders in the EU.

Her predecessor Antti Rinne stepped down on December 3 after the Center Party, one member of the ruling five-party coalition, said it had lost trust in him over his handling of a labor dispute at the state-owned postal service Posti.

Finland's six-month stint as president of the Council of the EU ends on December 31, so Marin's impact on that role will be limited. However, she will be quickly thrust into the European arena, when she attends her first European Council summit in Brussels on Thursday.

Marin will present the Finnish presidency's proposal for the EU’s seven-year budget, the Multiannual Financial Framework, according to a spokesperson for the country's diplomatic mission to the EU.

"We have a lot of work ahead to rebuild trust,” Marin said after her appointment.

“I have never thought about my age or gender, I think of the reasons I got into politics and those things for which we have won the trust of the electorate.”

Marin's appointment means that the leaders of all the parties in the center-left government are women, four of them under 35. Katri Kulmuni, 32, leads the Center Party; Maria Ohisalo, 34, leads the Green League; Li Anderson, 32, leads the Left Alliance and Anna-Maja Henriksson, 55, leads the Swedish People’s Party.

Marin is unlikely to pursue radically new policies, as the coalition's government program will stay untouched. Marin is known as a tough no-nonsense leader, who rose to fame at age 27 when she became the chair of the Tampere city council. She has been vocal about environmental issues, and leans politically toward her party's left-green wing.

”I come from a poor family and I would not have the means to succeed and get ahead in life without the welfare state and the Finnish education system. I come from a rainbow family, and this means that equality and human rights are important to me," Marin told Helsingin Sanomat, a Finnish daily newspaper, in January.