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Also Known As Kallas
Prime Minister of Estonia
Kaja Kalla is an Estonian politician who has been prime minister of Estonia since 2021, and is the first woman to serve in the role. The leader of the Reform Party since 2018, she was a member of the Riigikogu in 2019–2021, and 2011–2014. Kallas was a member of the European Parliament in 2014–2018, representing the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe. Before her election to Parliament, she was an attorney specialising in European competition law.
Prime Minister of Estonia (2021–present) :
On 25 January 2021, after the resignation of Jüri Ratas as prime minister following a scandal, Kallas' first cabinet, a Reform-led coalition government with the Centre Party, was formed. In doing so, she became the first female prime minister in Estonia's history.
During the latter half of 2021, the 2021–2023 global energy crisis disrupted the Estonian economy; businesses were forced to temporarily shut down, while the public requested government aid to pay for the high electricity and heating prices. Kallas initially resisted calls for government aid, suggesting that the government should search for long-term solutions rather than handing out government benefits, and that a free market should not require consistent government intervention to keep people afloat. The energy crisis nearly caused the collapse of the coalition government. Kallas observed in a speech that the high cost of natural gas coupled with the Russia-Ukraine crisis was driving the increase in energy prices, and that the green energy measures Estonia adopted limited what the government could do to handle the crisis. In January 2022, Kallas announced a 245 million euro plan to reduce the cost of energy from September 2021 to March 2022. The energy crisis impacted her popularity in Estonia.
During the 2021–2022 Russo-Ukrainian crisis, Kallas said that the Nord Stream 2 natural gas pipeline was "a geopolitical project not an economic one" and urged that the pipeline be terminated. She also stated that Europe's dependence on Russian natural gas was a significant political problem. In January 2022, Kallas committed Estonia to donating howitzers to Ukraine to assist in its defence against a possible Russian invasion, pending German approval as the howitzers were originally purchased from Germany. When Germany delayed in giving an answer, Estonia sent American-made Javelin anti-tank missiles instead in the first weeks of February 2022. Following Russia's recognition of the Donetsk and Luhansk people's republics, Kallas demanded that the European Union introduce sanctions on Russia. Kallas was praised domestically for her leadership during the Russia-Ukraine crisis. Subsequently, her approval rating soared, making her Estonia's most popular politician.
After the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine started on 24 February, Estonia along with other allies triggered Article 4 of NATO. Kallas pledged to support Ukraine with political and materiel support. By April 2022, 0.8% of Estonia's GDP per capita in military equipment had been handed over to Ukraine. Kallas has been praised both in Estonia and internationally as a leading pro-Ukrainian voice in the war, with the New Statesman calling her "Europe's New Iron Lady". She also strongly supported the admission of Ukraine to the European Union, saying that there was "a moral duty" to do so.
After her resignation on 14 July 2022, Kallas' second cabinet was sworn in on 18 July. The new government was a three-party coalition by the Reform Party, Social Democratic Party, and Isamaa. Her previous government had lost its parliamentary majority after the Centre Party left the coalition. As prime minister, Kallas attracted international attention as a leader in efforts to support Ukraine during the Russian invasion, delivering more military equipment to Ukraine as a proportion of GDP per capita than any other country in the world. In September 2022, in the context of a plan by three other bordering nations to restrict Russian tourists, she said: "Travel to the European Union is a privilege, not a human right." She added that it was "unacceptable that citizens of the aggressor state are able to freely travel in the EU, whilst at the same time people in Ukraine are being tortured and murdered." In February 2023, Kallas was mentioned as a possible candidate to replace NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg following his expected retirement that same year.
Kaja Kallas was born in Tallinn on 18 June 1977. She is the daughter of Siim Kallas, who was the 14th prime minister of Estonia and later a European Commissioner. During World War II, after the Soviet Union had invaded and occupied Estonia in 1940, as part of the wave of executions and deportations from Estonia that followed, her mother Kristi, six months old at the time, was deported by the Stalinist regime to Siberia with her mother and grandmother in a cattle car and lived there until she was ten years old. Kallas's great-grandfather was Eduard Alver (1886–1939), one of the politicians leading the establishment of the independent Republic of Estonia in 1918, and also first head of the Estonian Police in 1918–1919. Apart from Estonian, Kallas patrilineally also has distant Latvian and Baltic German ancestry, as discovered by investigative journalists researching her father's ancestry shortly after his premiership.
Kallas graduated from the University of Tartu in 1999 with a bachelor's degree in law. She lived in France and Finland briefly while training in European law. From 2007, she attended the Estonian Business School, earning an Executive Master of Business Administration (EMBA) in economics in 2010.
Since 2020, Kallas is a member of the Board of Trustees of the Friends of Europe. Additionally, she is a member of the European Council on Foreign Relations, an advisory board member of the Women Economic Forum, and a patron of the Model European Union Tallinn. [non-primary source needed] She is also a mentor of the European Liberal Youth, a member of the European Young Leaders, a MEP ambassor of Erasmus for Young Entrepreneurs, a member of the MEP Library Lovers Group, a political member of the European Internet Forum, a member of the extended board of the European Forum for Renewable Energy Sources, a member of the Global Young Leaders, a member of the Women Political Leaders, and a MEP ambassador of the European Entrepreneurship Education Network.
European Prize for Political Culture by Hans Ringier Foundation (2022)
Grand Cross of the Order of the Star of Romania (2021)
Member 2nd Class of the Order of Prince Yaroslav the Wise (Ukraine, 24 April 2023)
