Estonian Prime Minister Kaja Kallas is poised to become the EU's top diplomat following weeks of intense political maneuvering over its most senior posts, elevating a staunch defender of liberal democracy, shaped by her personal experience of Soviet occupation, to a crucial role shaping and advancing the bloc's security and defense goals.
The nomination of the EU foreign policy chief requires a "qualified majority" within the European Council, which is composed of the heads of state or government of the EU member states. That vote is expected during an EU leaders' summit on June 27-28 in Brussels. Before being appointed for a five-year term, Kallas will need approval by the European Parliament following hearings slated for this fall.
Sources in Brussels familiar with the negotiations over the EU's top jobs told RFE/RL that there is agreement among the bloc's 27 members on Kallas.
She would replace veteran Spanish Socialist politician Josep Borrell, whose tenure has spanned a global pandemic, wars on the EU's periphery in Nagorno-Karabakh and Ukraine, a border crisis with Belarus, and high-profile divisions over Israel's conduct of its war with EU- and U.S.-designated terrorist group Hamas in the Gaza Strip.
National Populism, Ukraine War
Pending her confirmation, Kallas will enter the job with the 27-member European Union wrestling internally with rising national populism and members' commitment to core values like rights and democracy, and tested externally by Russia and the war in Ukraine alongside other challenges to the current international order.
The start of her tenure would also roughly coincide with divisive U.S. elections and a leadership change in NATO, both of which pack major repercussions for an evolving transatlantic relationship.
Kallas would become the fifth EU representative for foreign affairs since the post's introduction in 1999, but the first from postcommunist Europe and the first Balt to reach the bloc's upper echelons of executive policymaking.
She has been among the most hawkish voices with respect to Russia. Kallas has bemoaned that "the world ignored" a decade of Russian aggression against Ukraine that began with the occupation of Crimea in 2014. And she has suggested that the West should have provided military aid to Kyiv even before Russia's full-scale invasion in 2022, as Tallinn did, with U.S. intelligence warning of an imminent attack as tens of thousands of Russian troops massed at the Ukrainian border.
WATCH: Estonian Prime Minister Kaja Kallas says it's important to agree on "practical steps" on how Ukraine gets into NATO once the conflict with Russia is over. She spoke to RFE/RL's Rikard Jozwiak on July 4, 2023, in Tallinn.
Russia "was and still is" a colonial power that Estonians are familiar with from up close, Kallas wrote earlier this month, and Moscow's "colonialist land-grab policy today in Ukraine is a heartbreaking reminder of how history can repeat itself."
The post, officially known as the high representative of the union for foreign affairs and security policy, provides a major platform for shaping the bloc's Common Security and Defense Policy. The high representative's most visible role is promoting EU defense cooperation, including with NATO, and coordinating strategic policies on defense and security.
Kallas has consistently rejected the notion of a peace deal that leaves internationally recognized Ukrainian territory -- from Crimea to the four regions Moscow purported to annex last year -- in Russian hands. She has told RFE/RL that "the end of the war is when Russia goes back to Russia."
Soviet Past
Kallas lived under Soviet occupation until the age of 14, with a father who was already promoting economic autonomy well before Estonia restored its independence in 1991. Her father, Siim Kallas, went on to serve briefly as Estonia's prime minister and hold three separate portfolios within the European Commission.
"This devil still lives in Russia," Kallas was quoted by Reuters as saying a year ago, when marking the anniversary of her mother and grandparents' forcible deportation in 1941 to Siberia by Soviet authorities eager to crush Estonia's patriotic elite.
One of her immediate challenges will include an elevated sparring partner in Hungary, as longtime Brussels critic Prime Minister Viktor Orban's country occupies the rotating EU presidency for the second half of this year.
The right-wing Orban has led a small but stubborn chorus of skeptics of key EU foreign policy issues stemming from the Ukraine war, including anti-Russia sanctions, supply of weapons and other military aid to Kyiv, and energy independence from Russia. Budapest has also resisted membership guarantees for countries like Ukraine, Georgia, and Moldova while pressing for greater progress to bring Balkan candidates like Serbia into the EU.
Kallas complained to RFE/RL as far back as mid-2023 that her main concern was that "maybe not all the allies have realized the security situation that we are in."
Kallas has long been calling for a "pathway" to make NATO membership for Ukraine a question of "not 'if' but 'when.'" She has acknowledged, however, that "it cannot happen when the war is going on."
In the Balkans, she has cultivated closer relations but reminded governments there of the need for reforms and anti-corruption efforts, as well as a resolution of recognition disputes involving Kosovo in particular.
Kallas has described the power of a better life on the European side of Russia's border as a powerful tool to counter Russian propaganda.
She has drawn on Estonia's ultimately failed experience with neutrality in the 1940s with respect to countries on Russia's border, like Georgia and Moldova, but emphasized that pursuing membership of NATO or the EU is "up to their decision-makers."
Kallas is a former lawyer who joined the liberal Estonian Reform Party in 2010 and served in the Estonian parliament and the European Parliament, where she focused on digital and innovation issues in particular.
She returned from Brussels to national politics and a victory in the 2019 elections, leading eventually to her confirmation in 2021 as Estonia's first-ever female prime minister.
On foreign policy, she spoke out consistently for ending European reliance on Russian energy.
She helped lead a trend among postcommunist countries of dismantling Soviet-era monuments, infuriating Moscow. In February, Russia placed Kallas and other Baltic officials on a wanted list for what Moscow called the "desecration of historical memory."
Kallas endured a bruising domestic scandal in 2023 over ongoing business in Russia by a company one-fourth owned by her husband, Arvo Hallik, despite her constant calls for Estonian companies to stop operating in Russia.
