Vilhelm Junnila
Vilhelm Junnila
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Vilhelm Junnila

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Vilhelm Junnila

Lassi Vilhelm Junnila (born 6 March 1982 in Naantali) is a Finnish politician currently serving in the Parliament of Finland, representing the constituency of Finland Proper. He is a member of the Finns Party. He is currently a member in three committees: the Constitutional Law Committee (vice chairperson), the Foreign Affairs Committee and the Intelligence Oversight Committee. He is also a member in the Finnish delegation to the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly and Finns Party parliamentary group´s vice chairperson.

He was elected to the parliament in 2019 with 10,788 personal votes. In 2023 elections he was elected again with 8303 votes. Junnila is also a member of the Naantali City Council.

In June 2023, he was appointed Minister of Economic Affairs in the Orpo Cabinet. After appointment, Junnila's past actions and potential connections to neo-Nazi organizations became a subject of heated discussion. On 30 June, Junnila announced that he would resign, making his term as a government minister one of the shortest in the political history of Finland since Lennart Oesch, who served as deputy Minister of Internal Affairs for 12 days in 1932. Junnila was succeeded by Wille Rydman as Minister of Economic Affairs on 6 July.

According to an aide, Junnila has previously worked at Fortum Oil and Gas and Neste Oil in IT, at the insulation and scaffolding company Arma Oy, and at smaller companies.

In between 2019 and 2022, Junnila made four budgetary motions in order to support Veljesapu-Perinneyhdistys, a Finnish organization that cherishes the heritage of the Finnish volunteers in the Waffen-SS. Junnila wrote in his motion, that the support would be "for the promotion of balanced historical research".

In November 2021, Junnila suggested in the Parliament that Finland should promote contraception and "climate abortions" – which he defined as "measures targeted to the population" – in "the underdeveloped societies of Africa" in order to curb population growth and enhance living conditions in Africa. The suggestion was heavily criticized by the former Minister of the Interior Päivi Räsänen, who called it horrendous to suggest that so-called "climate abortions" should be targeted at specific ethnic groups.

In December 2021, Junnila joined to make a statement together with eight other parliament members who condemned Veronika Honkasalo's initiative to boycott Israel's import products. The statement claimed that Honkasalo's suggestion was anti-semitic.

After his ministerial position was announced, Junnila's alleged connections to neo-Nazi networks were widely discussed in social media.

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