Heidi Anneli Hautala (born 14 November 1955) is a Finnish politician and Member of the European Parliament (MEP) from Finland.

[4] After less than two years on the assembly’s influential environment committee, Hautala was chosen to steer a highly sensitive proposal for a Fuel Quality Directive through the parliament.

In 2009, Hautala was re-elected to the European Parliament, where she served as chair of the Subcommittee on Human Rights and as member of the Committee on Foreign Affairs.

[10] Hautala is a signatory of the 2010 Declaration on Crimes of Communism, a patron of its preceding conference,[11] and was a member of the Reconciliation of European Histories Group as an MEP.

[16] Hautala resigned from her development and state ownership steering minister position in October 2013 amidst of allegations of abuse of power.

In a protest against Arctic ice drilling a year earlier, members of Greenpeace boarded without authorization on the multipurpose icebreakers Fennica and Nordica operated by the state-owned company Arctia Shipping under contract to the Royal Dutch Shell.

[17] Hautala's office had recommended that the company withdraw its criminal complaint against Greenpeace, and threatened to fire the management in case that they disobliged.

[23] Later, former activists of the Finnish Seafarers' Union admitted they started the Arctia Shipping case with the help of Finns Party's Matti Putkonen.

[26] In addition to her committee assignment, Hautala served as co-chair of the Working group on Reproductive Health, HIV/AIDS, and Development in the European Parliament.

[32] On trade, Hautala has proposed to curb the global trade of illegal timber to prevent deforestation,[33] asked the European Commission to introduce legislation to establish human rights due diligence requirements for multinational EU companies to respect human rights and prevent incidents such as Rana Plaza.

[34] and presented a shadow EU Action Plan on Responsible Business Conduct, to increase business accountability and responsibility, avoid that globalisation produce a race to the bottom and stop supply chains which deliver profits from human rights violations, such as an estimated $150 billion a year from forced labour.

[44] For the then upcoming Finnish semester, Hautala in 2019 proposed the promotion of health and well-being as an overall objective under which to work on matters such as global warming, air pollution and energy efficiency of buildings.

[45] Hautala was ranked as one of the 15 most influential MEPs in the 2014-19 legislature by VoteWatch, as measured by the positions held, the number of reports and opinions and the votes won, weighed by perceived importance and normalized by average influence of their country.

[47][48] In September 2022, Hautala was the recipient of the People's Choice: Outstanding Achievement in Public Service Award at The Parliament Magazine's annual MEP Awards[49] So when Heidi Hautala, a Green MP and former environment minister [sic], blasted declining democratic standards in Vladimir Putin's Russia, the sense of shock in Helsinki was palpable.

The nervous reaction to Ms Hautala's remarks has provided a faint echo of the self-censorship of the Soviet era, when the term "Finlandisation" was coined to describe countries that quietly tailored their politics and policies to suit Moscow.

[54] In 2015, news media reported that she was included in a Russian blacklist of prominent people from the European Union who are not allowed to enter the country.

Hautala has also been in a relationship with a German researcher Carlo Jordan,[57] and was considered close to Russian film director Andrei Nekrasov, a vocal critic of Putin before beginning to produce Russian-friendly propaganda.