Piia-Noora Kauppi

Who is Piia-Noora Kauppi?

Piia-Noora Kauppi is a Finnish politician representing the National Coalition Party and the managing director of the Federation of Finnish Financial Services. She was a Member of the European Parliament for the term from 2004 to 2009, her second time at that office. She was first elected as MEP in 1999 for the 1999 – 2004 period. In European Parliament election, 2004 she received 62,914 votes.

When not traveling to Brussels, she lives in Oulu with her husband and two children.

She has actively participated in women's rights issues.

She was one of the MEPs in All Party Disablement Group, which campaigns for rights of disabled people.

She strongly opposes death penalty and has campaigned to repeal it all over the world.

She asked whether the European Commission could strengthen gay rights in Gibraltar.

She was member of EU's Baltic sea group, where she has campaigned for environmental protection in the Baltic Sea.

She left the European Parliament on 1 January 2009 to become Managing Director of the Federation of Finnish Financial Services, a lobbying group. For this move she received an award for "Worst conflict of interest" at the "Worst EU lobbying Awards". According to the organisers she had for a long time been advocating interests of the European banking industry as an MEP by working against regulations for the sector. For example in 2005 she was reported by the Wall street journal to have supported the banking lobby with watering down regulations against money-laundering. The organisers of the awards question her qualification to continuously participate in regulation efforts for a sector she would later be lobbying for.