Estonia’s popular centre-right prime minister, Kaja Kallas, has begun weighing options for a new governing coalition after a sweeping election victory in which she received more personal votes than any politician in the country’s history.
The centre-right leader, one of Europe’s strongest pro-Kyiv voices, said on Monday she felt “humble and grateful” for a result that showed Estonians “overwhelmingly value liberal values, security founded on EU and Nato, and firm support to Ukraine”.
Kallas’s Reform party finished first in Sunday’s elections on 31.2% of the vote, giving it 37 MPs in Estonia’s 101-seat assembly, three more than in the previous parliament. Its far-right rival, the Conservative People’s party (EKRE), lost two seats, finishing second with 17.
Kristi Raik, a political scientist, said the outcome suggested a desire for continuity reflecting Kallas’s “strong leadership in the most serious security crisis since Estonia regained independence in 1991”, and popular dislike of EKRE’s policies.
Kallas has ruled out going into coalition with the far-right party, which campaigned against additional military aid to Kyiv and called for an end to the arrivals of Ukrainian refugees and radical cuts to overall immigration to protect Estonian workers.
Reform has promised to raise military spending to 3% of GDP and lower business taxes in Estonia, an EU and Nato member bordering Russia that has so far spent 1% of its GDP on military aid to Ukraine – proportionately more than any other country.
Kallas said talks with possible coalition partners could begin on Tuesday. She may try to relaunch her present three-party coalition with the Social Democrats and Isamaa (Fatherland), or seek a deal with the Centre party or liberal newcomers Estonia 200.
Centre won 14.7%, Estonia 200 13.5%, the Social Democrats 9.4% and Isamaa 8.3%. “We are weighing the benefits and drawbacks,” Kallas said, adding that discussion would be needed with other party leaders before formal negotiations could start.
Rein Toomla, a political analyst from the Johan Skytte Institute, said it appeared that Reform could now safely exclude EKRE from the coalition-building process as the latter’s “position has now become so weak that it can be easily ignored”.
EKRE’s leader, Martin Helme, suggested that Reform had stolen the election, in which more than 50% of voters voted electronically. “We did everything right, and with honesty, unlike those who stole our well-deserved victory,” he said.
The centre-right prime minister, whose multiple prewar warnings about the intentions of the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, have boosted her international credibility, has been vocal in her demands for more western military aid to Ukraine.
The Centre party, traditionally popular with Estonia’s large Russian-speaking minority, has largely supported her policy towards Ukraine and Russia, prompting a collapse in its electoral support and the loss of 10 parliamentary seats.
Reform finished first in the previous 2019 elections but was then kept out of power when three smaller parties formed a government that subsequently collapsed in 2021, allowing Kallas to step in and build a new coalition.
After the pre-election concerns that EKRE might outperform expectations, meanwhile, analysts said the far-right party had made a strategic error in challenging the government’s line on Ukraine and Russia.
“Their main communication mistake was the sharp confrontation they sought with the armed forces, and their tactic of calling into question core tenets of national security,” Ott Lumi, a political scientist, told the Estonian news agency ERR.
The misstep was all the stranger because EKRE prided itself on its military credentials, he said. “It seems their campaign stance, flatly ignoring their rivals’ arguments and making themselves into something of a pariah, scared potential voters off,” he said.
