Jäätteenmäki was born on a small farm in the forests of Ostrobothnia in Finland. Her brother was to take over the farm, so the daughters of the family went to school. Jäätteenmäki became a member of the Centre Party and was active in student politics. She earned a master's degree in law in 1980 and worked as a lawyer for the party's parliamentary group from 1981 until 1987, when she was elected to the Finnish Parliament. Jäätteenmäki was Minister of Justice from 1994 to 1995, then her party became part of the opposition. She was elected as chairwoman of the Centre Party of Finland from 18 June 2000 to 5 October 2003, although the first year was as acting leader during Esko Aho's sabbatical leave to lecture at Harvard University.
Prime Minister
After eight years in opposition, she led the Centre Party of Finland to a narrow victory over the formerly largest party, the Social Democratic Party of Finland, in the parliamentary elections of 2003. According to the new constitution, which was in effect for the first time after this election, she was thereby given the first opportunity to form a new Cabinet. After successful coalition negotiations with the Social Democrats and the Swedish People's Party, she came to head a coalition cabinet which chiefly continued on the lines of its predecessor, Paavo Lipponen's second Cabinet, but introduced new measures to stimulate the economy, including tax cuts. During her brief time in office, Finland was the only country in the world to have women as both prime minister and president, a situation underlined by the fact that half her cabinet were women; but at the same time there was another country, New Zealand, whose head of stateQueen Elizabeth II, her New Zealand representative Governor-General Silvia Cartwright, Prime Minister Helen Clark and Chief JusticeSian Elias were all female.
Resignation
Anneli Jäätteenmäki resigned on 18 June 2003, under pressure resulting from the accusation that she had lied to Parliament and the public over how she had acquired confidential Foreign Ministry documents which she used for political purposes during the election campaign. The documents contained diplomatic information from a meeting between United States President George W. Bush and Finland's Prime Minister Paavo Lipponen about Finland's position regarding the U.S.'s Iraq war. Jäätteenmäki used the information to suggest that her rival, the Social Democrat leader Paavo Lipponen, had secretly offered Finnish support for the U.S.-led coalition, a substantial breach of the official policy of neutrality in Finland's foreign politics, and thus associated Finland with what many Finns considered an illegalwar of aggression. Jäätteenmäki broke the traditional unity and silence behind Finland's security policies. As the elections turned out to be close, the defeated Social Democrats found reasons to suspect that her nontraditional campaign tactic was decisive in determining the outcome, which soured the relationship between the two major coalition partners. After the leaked documents were published in several newspapers in March, the police launched a criminal investigation based on the Official Secrets Act. On 11 June Prime Minister Jäätteenmäki was heard as a witness by the police, which led to increasing pressure on her to come clean on her role in the leak. The same week, the incriminating minutes of a meeting of Centre Party leaders were leaked to the press, as later came clear, via the Centre Party second vice-chairman Hannu Takkula. On 16 June it came to light that a presidential aide, Martti Manninen, affiliated with the Centre Party, had leaked the foreign ministry documents. On 18 June Jäätteenmäki gave her "full explanation" to Parliament and apologised to the President, claiming that she had been faxed the documents without asking for them, and that she had not known of their secrecy. The Parliament was not satisfied with her account, and once Manninen publicly claimed that Jäätteenmäki had specifically and forcefully asked for the information, and that he would be able to prove it, her coalition partners made it clear that they had no trust in her leadership. She resigned the same evening, citing the lack of political trust, and without admitting any wrongdoing. Consequently, she announced on 24 June that she would resign as leader of the Centre Party. Matti Vanhanen was elected as the new party leader on 5 October, and he succeeded her as Prime Minister. The police investigation into the leak concluded, on 19 December 2003, that Jäätteenmäki should be prosecuted for aiding or abetting Manninen in revealing state secrets in contravention of the law. However, on 19 March 2004, the Helsinki District Court acquitted Jäätteenmäki on all counts.
Jäätteenmäki served as an MEP for the Centre Party in the European Parliament. In the 2004 European Parliament elections, she received over 140,000 votes, the highest individual tally and approximately 8% of all votes cast. In April 2006, Jäätteenmäki announced to the Finnish media that she was going to take some time out of her parliamentary work due to breast cancer, but she returned to politics following her successful recovery. Despite offers to return to Finnish national politics, she declined to become a candidate in the Finnish Parliament elections in 2007. She was reelected to the European Parliament in the 2009 European Parliament elections with the second highest tally of votes in Finland after Timo Soini.
