Finland defence minister to take two months’ paternity leave amid Nato bid

Finland’s defence minister will take almost two months’ paternity leave early next year amid his country’s bid to join Nato, a move his Centre party praised.

“We proudly support Antti Kaikkonen’s decision,” the party leader and finance minister, Annika Saarikko, said. Kaikkonen will be off work from 6 January until the end of February.

“The opportunity to take and decide on family leave belongs to everyone,” Saarikko said.

Kaikkonen announced the birth of his second child in July.

“Children are only little for a moment, and I want to remember it in more than just photographs,” he wrote on Twitter.

In Finland, fathers whose children were born before September 2022 are entitled to 54 days paternity leave. About 80% of dads in Finland take some amount of paternity leave, the government said last year.

While several ministers have taken maternity leave during their stints in the current government, Kaikkonen is one of the first male ministers to go on paternity leave. In the late 1990s, the then-prime minister, Paavo Lipponen, took paternity leave in a groundbreaking move.

During Kaikkonen’s absence, he will be replaced by Centre MP Mikko Savola.

“Savola has long and wide experience and expertise in defence policy,” Kaikkonen said.

Finland and Sweden dropped decades of military non-alignment and scrambled to become Nato members in May, after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. All 30 Nato member states except Hungary and Turkey have ratified Finland’s accession, which requires unanimous approval.

The Hungarian prime minister, Viktor Orbán, said in November that the country would approve Finland and Sweden’s accession to Nato next year.

Turkey, on the other hand, has demanded that the two countries take a tougher stance on Kurdish militants that it considers terrorists before backing their Nato bids.