The first female Prime Minister of Estonia officially submitted her resignation to President Alar Karis during a short meeting held in the Presidential Palace in Tallinn. At the meeting, President Karis summarized Kallas’ three and a half years as Prime Minister, his words were quoted by the BNS Baltic news service.
He stated that this period had milestones such as the coronavirus epidemic, the economic recession and the war in which Russia attacked Ukraine. Under the leadership of the now 47-year-old Kallas, Estonia was one of Europe’s loudest supporters of Ukraine following the February 2022 Russian attack.
The Prime Minister’s resignation automatically entailed the resignation of his three-party cabinet, which is made up of the center-right liberal Reform Party he leads, the center-left Social Democratic Party and the liberal party Estonia 200 (Eesti 200). The government will remain in place until the formation of the new cabinet, which is expected at the end of July or the beginning of August.
He has a successor
The Reform Party announced on June 29 that it had chosen longtime member and climate protection minister Kristen Michal as its prime ministerial candidate to replace Kallas, whose last major task was to represent Estonia at last week’s NATO summit in Washington.
According to MTI, Michal’s appointment must be approved by the head of state and the 101-member parliament, where the coalition has a comfortable majority. Michal has held the position of Minister of Climate Affairs since last April. The 49-year-old former Minister of Economy and Justice has been an active member of the Reform Party, Estonia’s most important political organization, since the end of the nineties.
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