Nils Ole Hilmer Torvalds (born 7 August 1945) is a Finnish politician who had been a

Member of the European Parliament A member of the European Parliament (MEP) is a person who has been Election, elected to serve as a popular representative in the European Parliament. When the European Parliament (then known as the Common Assembly of the European Coal and S ...

(MEP) from 2012 to 2024. He is a member of the

Swedish People's Party of Finland The Swedish People's Party of Finland (SPP; , SFP; , RKP) is a Finnish political party founded in 1906. Its primary aim is to represent the interests of the minority Swedish-speaking population of Finland. The party is currently a participant i ...

, part of the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe. Swedo-Finnish Torvalds is the son of the

poet A poet is a person who studies and creates poetry. Poets may describe themselves as such or be described as such by others. A poet may simply be the creator (thought, thinker, songwriter, writer, or author) who creates (composes) poems (oral t ...

Ole Torvalds, and the father of the

software engineer Software engineering is a branch of both computer science and engineering focused on designing, developing, testing, and maintaining software applications. It involves applying engineering principles and computer programming expertise to develop ...

Linus Torvalds Linus Benedict Torvalds ( , ; born 28 December 1969) is a Finnish software engineer who is the creator and lead developer of the Linux kernel. He also created the distributed version control system Git. He was honored, along with Shinya Yam ...

Linux kernel The Linux kernel is a Free and open-source software, free and open source Unix-like kernel (operating system), kernel that is used in many computer systems worldwide. The kernel was created by Linus Torvalds in 1991 and was soon adopted as the k ...

fame.

Education and experience

Torvalds was a member of the Communist Party of Finland from 1969 to 1982. He studied economics in

Moscow Moscow is the Capital city, capital and List of cities and towns in Russia by population, largest city of Russia, standing on the Moskva (river), Moskva River in Central Russia. It has a population estimated at over 13 million residents with ...

and was the editor of the taistoist magazine ''Arbetartidningen Enhet''. Torvalds has later described his communism as a "rebellion". Between 1995 and 2004 Torvalds worked as a foreign correspondent for the Finnish Broadcasting Company in Moscow and Washington. Torvalds is fluent in Swedish, Finnish, English, German, and Russian. And he also understands Flemish, Danish and Norwegian.

Political career

Career in national politics

In 2006, Torvalds joined the Swedish People's Party, and the following year he was elected to the post of the third vice chairperson. This upset some party voters due to Torvalds' past. In 2008, he was elected to Helsinki City Council for term 2009–2012. On 11 June 2017 the Swedish People's Party chose Torvalds as the party candidate for the 2018 presidential election. Some of his campaign themes were education, technology and the environment. Torvalds was the only candidate who openly supported Finland's

NATO The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO ; , OTAN), also called the North Atlantic Alliance, is an intergovernmental organization, intergovernmental Transnationalism, transnational military alliance of 32 Member states of NATO, member s ...

membership during his campaign. In the election, Torvalds placed last with 1.5 percent of the votes, while the incumbent president Sauli Niinistö went on to secure his second term.

Member of the European Parliament

Torvalds was a candidate for European Parliament election in 2009 on the Swedish People's Party list. He received 14,044 votes which was insufficient for a seat. However, on 5 July 2012, he was installed in the European Parliament, when Carl Haglund left his seat to join the Katainen Cabinet as

Minister of Defence A ministry of defence or defense (see spelling differences), also known as a department of defence or defense, is the part of a government responsible for matters of defence and military forces, found in states where the government is divid ...

. In the

2014 European Parliament election The 2014 European Parliament election was held in the European Union (EU) between 22 and 25 May 2014. It was the 8th parliamentary election since the first direct elections in 1979, and the first in which the European political parties field ...

Torvalds received about 29,000 votes and was elected. As a MEP his positions have included vice-chair of the Fisheries committee (PECH) and member of the committee for Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs (LIBE). Since 2021, he has been part of the Parliament's delegation to the Conference on the Future of Europe. Torvalds has served as shadow rapporteur on the

circular economy A circular economy (also referred to as circularity or CE) is a model of resource Production (economics), production and Resource consumption, consumption in any economy that involves sharing, leasing, Reuse, reusing, repairing, refurbishing, and ...

and on the

biofuel Biofuel is a fuel that is produced over a short time span from Biomass (energy), biomass, rather than by the very slow natural processes involved in the formation of fossil fuels such as oil. Biofuel can be produced from plants or from agricu ...

s directive (which became directive 2015/1513) and as rapporteur of the annual report 2018 on the European banking union. Torvalds opposed the Copyright Directive (2019) since it was first proposed, considering it unbalanced especially because of its article 13 (i.e. 17). In addition to his committee assignments, Torvalds is part of the MEPs Against Cancer group and the European Parliament Intergroup on Traditional Minorities, National Communities and Languages. Following the

2019 elections The following elections were scheduled to occur in 2019. The International Foundation for Electoral Systems has a calendar of upcoming elections around the world, and the National Democratic Institute also maintains a calendar of elections in cou ...

, Torvalds was part of a cross-party working group in charge of drafting the European Parliament's five-year work program on economic and fiscal policies as well as trade. In June 2023, Torvalds was the recipient of the Environment and Climate Action Award at ''

The Parliament Magazine ''The Parliament Magazine'' is a monthly EU politics, policy and culture magazine. Its website, www.theparliamentmagazine.eu, is a forum for discussion on the latest developments in EU politics and policy, featuring regular contributions from pr ...

s annual MEP Awards

Linux kernel statement

Nils' son

, the creator of the

, joked during a LinuxCon keynote on 18 September 2013 that the

National Security Agency The National Security Agency (NSA) is an intelligence agency of the United States Department of Defense, under the authority of the director of national intelligence (DNI). The NSA is responsible for global monitoring, collection, and proces ...

, the creators of SELinux, wanted a backdoor in the kernel. However, later, Linus's father revealed that the NSA had actually asked for the installation of backdoors in Linux.

Other activities

* Reimagine Europa, Member of the Advisory Board

Honors

FIN Order of the Lion of Finland 4Class BAR

Order of the Lion of Finland Order, ORDER or Orders may refer to: * A socio-political or established or existing order, e.g. World order, Ancien Regime, Pax Britannica * Categorization, the process in which ideas and objects are recognized, differentiated, and understood ...

(Finland, 2021)

Works

* *

References

External links

Nils Torvalds personal website (in Swedish)(in Finnish)(in English)

Official EP website
{{DEFAULTSORT:Torvalds, Nils 1945 births Living people People from Raseborg Swedish-speaking Finns Finnish communists Swedish People's Party of Finland politicians Finnish reporters and correspondents MEPs for Finland 2009–2014 MEPs for Finland 2014–2019 MEPs for Finland 2019–2024 Candidates for President of Finland Nils