Estonian Prime Minister Kaja Kallas has submitted her resignation in order to take up a new job as the European Union’s foreign policy chief, the president’s office said.
Kallas, 47, has emerged as a strong critic of neighbouring Russia and what she says are its expansionist aims since she became prime minister in early 2021. She has pressed Estonia’s allies in NATO and the EU to provide unconditional support for Ukraine in its struggle to push back Moscow’s invading forces.
Summing up Kallas’ three and a half years at the helm of the nation of 1.3 million, Karis was quoted as saying by the Baltic News Service that “it has been a time full of crises, the milestones (such as) the coronavirus, the economic recession and the war in Europe, when Russia destroyed our previous security picture with its aggression in Ukraine”.
The Prime Minister’s move automatically triggered the resignation of Kallas’ three-party cabinet, made up of her centre-right Reform Party, the Social Democratic Party and the liberal Estonia 200 party.
It will continue as a caretaker government until the new cabinet has been sworn in, most likely at the end of July or early August.
The Reform Party announced on June 29 that it chose party veteran and climate minister Kristen Michal to replace Kallas, whose last main duty was to represent Estonia at a Nato summit in Washington last week.
Michal’s nomination will have to be approved by Karis and the 101-seat parliament, or Riigikogu, where the coalition holds a comfortable majority. He has been serving as the minister for climate affairs since April last year.
The 49-year-old former economics and justice minister has been active in the Reform Party, Estonia’s key political establishment, since the late 1990s.
