Helsinki - Finland's future Prime Minister Juha Sipila said Thursday he would attempt to form a government with the euro sceptic Finns Party and another right-wing party.
Sipila's Centre Party won the country's April 19 general election on a promise to revive Finland's moribund economy.
The Finns Party and the conservative National Coalition Party (NCP), with whom he plans to form a coalition, came second and third respectively.
Together, the three parties hold 124 of 200 seats in parliament.
"I must admit, it was not an easy process," Sipila, a 53-year-old self-made IT millionaire and relative newcomer to politics, told reporters of the process to choose his coalition partners.
This is the first time the populist Finns Party will be in government. Long known for its anti-immigration stance, which helped it gain a foothold among the electorate, it has in recent years shifted the target of its attacks to Europe.
The party refused to enter government four years ago in protest over EU bailouts for Greece and Portugal.
The NCP is the party of outgoing Prime Minister Alexander Stubb, whose four-party left-right coalition lost the election.
The negotiations between the liberal, formerly agrarian Centre Party, the Finns Party and the NCP on a government programme are likely to focus on liberal reforms to boost economic growth.
Finland's economy stagnated in 2014, after two years of recession.
AFP
