Kaja Kallas, a pro-business europhile is to be Estonia’s first female Prime Minister after parliament voted in her new coalition on Monday.
Kallas, a 43-year-old who happens to be is the daughter of the Baltic state’s former prime minister Siim Kallas, she is a former MEP and leader of the Reform Party,
She will govern in a coalition with the Centre Party of outgoing prime minister Juri Ratas.
Her government will command 59 seats in Estonia’s 101-member parliament and won the backing of 70 MPs in Monday’s confidence vote after garnering support from the Social Democrats.
The new government will be sworn in on Tuesday.
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Kallas vowed while speaking to the parliament as the state struggles with COVID-19 “to keep Estonia as open as possible so that people could go to work, and children to school and the economic activity could continue.”
She said that her “government will be like a tightrope walker over an abyss, always watching their balance” between controlling the pandemic and allowing the economic activity.
Ratas resigned earlier this month after his party came under investigation for corruption.
The far-right EKRE party which had been in coalition with Ratas is now out of government.
Kallas’s party came first in parliamentary elections in 2019 but did not win an outright majority and then failed to build a coalition.
During her time at the European Parliament between 2014 and 2018, she was regularly included on lists of the most influential MEPs.
