Kaja Kallas, who was an MEP from 2014 to 2018 (three years after entering politics in Estonia as a parliamentarian), knows European mysteries well. Politics is even a family affair for the Kallas: his father Sim was European Commissioner for Transport between 2010 and 2014 (and Prime Minister in Estonia between 2002 and 2003, after having headed several ministries in his country ).
Daughter and granddaughter of deportees to the gulag
As the daughter and granddaughter of gulag deportees in Siberia (her mother was only six months old when her own mother was put on a cattle car in 1940, like thousands of other Estonians), Kaja Kallas n does not hesitate to plead Ukraine’s cause within a sometimes timid Union, on the question of military aid or Kiev’s membership, at the very beginning of the Russian invasion on February 24, 2022. posture which allowed him to reach the peak of his popularity in spring 2022, comments Bartosz Chmielewski, analyst at the “Center for Oriental Studies”, OSW, a Polish think tank: “The public appreciated the image of a Prime Minister speaking in European living rooms, supporting the efforts of Ukrainians, often in defiance of the European mainstream, and shifting the center of gravity of the debate to help Ukraine.”
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His European nomination would come at the right time, while his rating has faded in Estonia. The blame lies with a series of unpopular reforms involving new taxes, and a recent scandal which affected her husband, a well-known figure in the country. The public service media ERR indeed revealed in the summer of 2023 that Arvo Hallik owned a 25% stake in a company which indirectly continued to trade with Russia. Information that fits poorly with the pleadings of his spouse evoking a “State sponsor of terrorism” when she talks about the Russian neighbor. “For a large part of Estonians, it was unacceptable that in private she could tolerate what she publicly criticized,” souligne Bartosz Chmielewski. For Kaja Kallas, who was reappointed as head of the executive in March 2023, and of whom 71% of respondents judged eight months later that she would do well to resign, an escape from Brussels could prove saving.
