Education
He moved to Finland in 1992 and graduated from Åbo Akademi University as an economist.
He moved to Finland in 1992 and graduated from Åbo Akademi University as an economist.
He ran for Parliament of Finland in 2011 as an opposition to nationalist movements gaining power and popularity among Finnish voters. He belongs to the Swedish People"s Party of Finland. Spiegel has both Russian and Finnish citizenship.
The first language he learned in Finland was Swedish.
He gives lectures at schools, universities and enterprises as an expert in international marketing and multicultural issues. But being a party of a minority by nature, it is interested to represent and advocate all language minorities, and so Spiegel founded a political movement to represent the interests of all language minorities.
The name of the movement in Finland is Uussuomalaiset (New Finns). But since language minorities are numerous around Europe, "New Europeans" has been chosen for the international name.
Spiegel has been politically active in Finland and the European Union as a member of the Swedish People"s Party of Finland (RKP) since the end of the 1990s. In recent times the RKP has lost support due to the diminishing Swedish-speaking population in Finland and the growing popularity of the biggest parties.
Ilya Spiegel speaks five languages and works for international manufacturing corporations as a specialist in foreign trade and foreign direct investment, he is a board member of several cultural Non-governmental organizations.