Nils Torvalds

Template:Short description Template:Infobox officeholder Nils Ole Hilmer Torvalds<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> (born 7 August 1945) is a Finnish politician who had been a Member of the European Parliament (MEP) from 2012 to 2024. He is a member of the Swedish People's Party of Finland, part of the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe.

Swedo-Finnish Torvalds is the son of the poet Ole Torvalds, and the father of the software engineer Linus Torvalds of Linux kernel fame.<ref>Torvalds, 2001</ref>

Education and experience

Torvalds was a member of the Communist Party of Finland from 1969 to 1982. He studied economics in Moscow and was the editor of the taistoist magazine Arbetartidningen Enhet. Torvalds has later described his communism as a "rebellion".<ref name="kauppalehti">Template:Cite web</ref> Between 1995 and 2004 Torvalds worked as a foreign correspondent for the Finnish Broadcasting Company in Moscow and Washington.<ref name="yle2018">Template:Cite web</ref>

Torvalds is fluent in Swedish, Finnish, English, German, and Russian. And he also understands Flemish, Danish and Norwegian.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

Political career

Career in national politics

In 2006, Torvalds joined the Swedish People's Party,<ref name="yle2018" /> and the following year he was elected to the post of the third vice chairperson.<ref>Sfp valde orförande och viceordförande, energipolitiska ställningstagandet remitterades Template:Webarchive (SFP 10.06.2007)</ref> This upset some party voters due to Torvalds' past.<ref name="yle2018" /> In 2008, he was elected to Helsinki City Council for term 2009–2012.<ref name="hel">Template:Cite web</ref>

On 11 June 2017 the Swedish People's Party chose Torvalds as the party candidate for the 2018 presidential election.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> Some of his campaign themes were education, technology and the environment. Torvalds was the only candidate who openly supported Finland's NATO membership during his campaign.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> 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.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

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.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> 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. In the 2014 European Parliament election Torvalds received about 29,000 votes and was elected.<ref name="kauppalehti" />

As a MEP<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> 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.<ref>Members of the delegation to the Conference on the Future of Europe European Parliament.</ref>

Torvalds has served as shadow rapporteur on the circular economy<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> and on the biofuels directive<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> (which became directive 2015/1513<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>) and as rapporteur of the annual report 2018 on the European banking union.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

Torvalds opposed the Copyright Directive (2019) since it was first proposed, considering it unbalanced especially because of its article 13 (i.e. 17).<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

In addition to his committee assignments, Torvalds is part of the MEPs Against Cancer group<ref>MAC MEPs in the 2019-24 legislature MEPs Against Cancer.</ref> and the European Parliament Intergroup on Traditional Minorities, National Communities and Languages.<ref>Intergroup on Traditional Minorities, National Communities and Languages European Parliament.</ref>

Following the 2019 elections, 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.<ref>Florian Eder (June 13, 2019), POLITICO Brussels Playbook, presented by Google: Madrid’s moment — Parliament working groups sneak peak[sic — Happy birthday, GDPR] Politico Europe.</ref>

In June 2023, Torvalds was the recipient of the Environment and Climate Action Award at The Parliament Magazine's annual MEP Awards<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>

Linux kernel statement

Nils' son Linus Torvalds, the creator of the Linux kernel, joked during a LinuxCon keynote on 18 September 2013 that the National Security Agency, the creators of SELinux, wanted a backdoor in the kernel.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> However, later, Linus's father revealed that the NSA had actually asked for the installation of backdoors in Linux.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> Template:Quote