An active man
Dr Olli Rehn studied in Minnesota and Helsinki before earning his doctorate in 1996 at Oxford, with a study of corporatism and industrial competitiveness in small European states. He entered the Finnish Parliament in 1991 as an MP for that country’s Center Party, which he served as deputy chairman, before moving to Brussels as a member of the European Parliament after Finland joined the EU in 1995; he subsequently worked in the Commission. He returned to Finland in 2002 in an academic and advisory capacity before being named Finland’s sole European commissioner in 2004. Aside from a heavy office schedule, he is a frequent Commission face outside Brussels, giving talks around Europe almost weekly since taking up his current post, within the last two months alone in Budapest, Ljubljana, Oslo, London, the NATO Assembly, and Strasbourg. He is also a soccer aficionado, having once served as chairman of the Football League of Finland; he still plays regularly in Brussels on the Commission’s team.
