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Home / World

The new Finland Prime Minister is only 34 and believed to be the youngest world leader

By Eliot Hastie
news.com.au·
9 Dec, 2019 01:38 AM2 mins to read

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Sanna Marin is now the world's youngest sitting Prime Minister. Photo / Getty Images

Sanna Marin is now the world's youngest sitting Prime Minister. Photo / Getty Images

Finland's government has just nominated its youngest ever Prime Minister - and she's just 34 years of age.

Sanna Marin has been picked to lead the country's government following the resignation of Antti Rinne.

Mr Rinne was forced to resign after one of the coalition parties, the Centre Party, said it had lost confidence in him following the handling of the Postal Strike, reports News.com.au.

The current Transport Minister for the country's Social Democrats, Ms Marin narrowly beat out Antti Lindtman, head of the party's parliamentary group, to take the leadership role.

Ms Marin has had a swift rise in Finland since she became head of the city council of her hometown Tampere at the age of 27 and joined parliament in 2015.

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Ms Marin is understood to be the world's youngest leader, beating out Kim Jong-un, North Korea's dictator, who is 12 months her senior at 35.

She is certainly Finland's youngest ever Prime Minister and is the youngest ever female Prime Minister in the world too.

Finland's government is actually relatively young with four of the five party leaders in the coalition under 35 years of age but all five of them are also women.

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It includes Katri Kulmuni, 32, Minister of Economic Affairs, Maria Ohisalo, 34, Minister of the Interior, Li Andersson, 32, Minister of Education and Anna-Maja Henriksson, 55, Minister of Justice.

Finland’s government is now led by these five party leaders. #newgeneration pic.twitter.com/vis0qB9tO8

— Tuomas Niskakangas (@TNiskakangas) December 8, 2019

Ms Marin will take control of Finland as it is in the middle of a three-day wave of strikes which will halt production for many of the country's largest companies.

It is believed that the strikes will cost Finnish companies a combined 500 million euros ($A808) in lost revenue according to the Confederation of Finnish Industries.

"We have a lot of work ahead to rebuild trust," Ms Marin told reporters.

The centre-left coalition only came to power six-months ago but has agreed that a change in leadership will not change the direction of its political program stressing a shift to carbon neutrality.

"We have a joint government program which glues the coalition together."

Ms Marin's appointment comes at an awkward time for Finland which holds the rotating presidency of the European Union until the end of the year, playing a central role in efforts to hammer out a new budget for the bloc.

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