[3][4] On 2 April 2023, Orpo's National Coalition Party won the 2023 parliamentary election with a plurality of 20.8% of the vote and 48 seats.

[5] During his tenure as Minister of the Interior, Orpo received support for his handling of the 2015 migration crisis from coalition partners in the anti-immigration Finns Party, as well as from opposition lawmakers.

[9] In contrast to polyglot and outspoken Stubb, Orpo was widely seen as a careful consensus-seeker with little experience of international politics.

For both Sipilä and Orpo, at stake were major healthcare and local government reform, which were key to their plan to balance public finances.

[14] In addition to his national political roles, Orpo co-chaired (alongside Valdis Dombrovskis) the EPP Economic and Financial Affairs Ministers Meeting, which gathers the centre-right European People's Party (EPP) ministers ahead of meetings of the Economic and Financial Affairs Council (ECOFIN).

Later, Prime Minister Antti Rinne resigned, and Kulmuni publicly refused to join the National Coalition Party's plan of premature elections.

[18] Orpo began government formation talks when the new parliament and President convened the week after Easter and named him as the lead negotiator.

"[18] Orpo was elected by parliamentary groups as the Speaker of the Parliament of Finland on 12 April on a temporary basis until a new government is formed.

[26] These announcements were welcomed by employers, who see in the program the reforms they have been "demanding for decades", but the unions denounced "an attack on employees".

While the center-left and left-wing parties also denounced a "difficult program, especially for people on low and middle incomes" (Sanna Marin) and "the most anti-worker government in Finnish history" (Li Andersson), Finns Party leader Riikka Purra declared that she "saw no divergence between the interests of employers and employees".

Immigrant workers will no longer have the same privileges as permanent residents, and will have to leave the country within three months of being laid off.

[27][28] The scandal around Nazi-connected joking and potential connections to neo-Nazi organisations of Minister of Economic Affairs Vilhelm Junnila led to him resigning.