The EU’s outgoing foreign policy chief, Josep Borrell. His tenure spanned a global pandemic, wars on the EU’s periphery in Nagorno-Karabakh and Ukraine, and a border crisis with Belarus.
“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.”
Kallas delivers a speech at the European Parliament in Strasbourg in March 2022.
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.
With contributions by RFE/RL Kosovo Service correspondent Krenare Cubolli
Source link : https://www.rferl.org/a/kaja-kallas-eu-foreign-policy-chief-russia-estonia/33011254.html
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Publish date : 2024-06-26 07:00:00
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