Swedish People's Party of Finland

Swedish People's Party of Finland (Swedish: Svenska folkpartiet i Finland (SFP); Finnish: Suomen ruotsalainen kansanpuolue (RKP)) is a Swedish-speaking minority and mainly liberal party in Finland. The party's main election issues has since its founding been the Swedish-speaking Finns' right to their own language and to maintain the Swedish language's position in Finland. The party has been in governmental position since 1979 with one or two seats in the government and has collaborated with the right as well as the left wing in the Finnish parliament. The fact that both the right and the left wing need the support from the party has done that they have been able to affect Finnish politics in a larger scale than the party's actual size. The position of the Swedish language as one of two official languages in Finland and the Swedish-speaking minority's right to the Swedish culture are two of the results of the party's influence in Finnish politics. The party is a member of Liberal International and the European Liberal Democrat and Reform Party.

Swedish language is one of the two official languages of Finland. The SFP has as its main raison d'être the protection and strengthening of the position of Swedish of Finland.

The Swedish People's Party of Finland has the most eclectic profile of any of the political parties in Finland, its members and supporters including (chiefly):

fishermen and farmers from the Swedish-speaking coastal areas.

small-town dwellers from the adjacent Swedish-speaking and bi-lingual towns.

green-minded and left-leaning middle-class intellectuals.

liberals in general, who currently have no representation of their own in the Finnish parliament, and who as such benefit from the predominantly liberal values of the SFP.