Kaja Kallas has been at the helm of the Baltic nation for three and a half years and has been a vocal supporter of Ukraine.
Kaja Kallas has officially resigned as Estonia’s prime minister to become the European Union’s foreign policy chief later this year.
Kallas — the Baltic nation’s first female PM — handed in her formal resignation to President Alar Karis on Monday during a brief meeting at the Presidential Palace in the country’s capital, Tallinn.
Under Kallas, 47, Estonia has been one of Europe’s most vocal backers of Ukraine following the full-scale Russian invasion in February 2022.
She has been at the helm of the nation, with a population of 1.3 million, for three and a half years.
In a tribute to the politician, Alar Karis summed up her tenure by saying, “It has been a time full of crises, 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.”
Her last main duty was representing Estonia at a NATO summit in Washington last week.
In her new role, Kallas will replace Spain’s Josep Borrell, who has served as the EU High Representative for the Common Foreign and Security Policy since 2019.
In Estonia, her decision to leave automatically triggered the resignation of Kallas’ three-party cabinet, comprised of her centre-right Reform Party, the Social Democratic Party and the liberal Estonia 200 party.
The coalition will continue as a caretaker government until the new cabinet is sworn in at the end of July or early August.
On 29 June, the Reform Party announced that it had chosen Kristen Michal, party veteran and climate minister, as the candidate to replace Kallas as PM.
Michal’s nomination will have to be approved by Karis and the 101-seat parliament — known as the Riigikogu — where the coalition currently holds a comfortable majority.
He has been serving as the minister for climate affairs since April of 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.