BRUSSELS — Kaja Kallas’ challenges began on her very first day in office.
While the EU’s top diplomat was in Kyiv, she tweeted: “[T]he European Union wants Ukraine to win this war” against Russia. This statement raised eyebrows among EU officials who felt uneasy about her deviation from what they considered established language, especially after two years of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
One EU diplomat observed, “She (Kallas) is still acting like a prime minister,” highlighting concerns about her approach among internal bloc dynamics.
According to the aforementioned diplomat and nine others, Kallas has made several missteps since taking office, from proposing significant initiatives without consensus to making bold foreign policy statements. However, she has garnered support from northern and eastern EU member states, including Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen, with a defender commenting, “Overall, we are very happy with her.”
As Kallas sought to assert her influence by urging EU nations to enhance military aid to Ukraine, several diplomats expressed dissatisfaction with her leadership style, complaining about her lack of consultation on sensitive issues. Over time, these concerns have intensified, particularly regarding her firm stance on Russia, which contrasts with the more cautious perspectives of Spain and Italy, who do not view Moscow as an immediate threat to the EU.
One EU official remarked, “If you listen to her, it seems we are at war with Russia, which is not the EU line.”
Haters Gonna Hate
After returning from the Munich Security Conference in February, Kallas drafted a proposal urging EU countries to provide billions in urgent military aid to Ukraine, following U.S. Vice President JD Vance’s dismissal of Russia as a concern.
Displaying a prime minister’s decisiveness, she circulated a two-page document to address a potential U.S. shortfall, requesting that the bloc’s 27 member nations contribute at least 1.5 million rounds of artillery ammunition, among other needs. This proposal, which arrived unexpectedly on a Sunday evening before a scheduled foreign affairs meeting, caught many off guard and upset some members. More controversially, Kallas structured her proposal to require contributions proportional to each country’s economic size.
The intention was to encourage larger EU nations like France, who contributed less per capita than their Northern or Eastern counterparts, to contribute more. However, some perceived this as coercive. Criticism intensified when Kallas agreed to scale back her ambitions, aiming for just €5 billion worth of artillery shells as an initial phase.
Diplomats from Eastern and Northern Europe noted that Kallas had not secured support from major countries like France before presenting her plan. “This sort of came out of nowhere. The process could have been better managed to avoid surprising people,” said one diplomat, while also defending Kallas by stating, “If she’d done the perfect process, they would have hated it anyway.”
An EEAS official minimized the criticisms, arguing that member countries selected Kallas for her wartime leadership capabilities. “They hired a head of state for a reason, not to moderate quietly and find the lowest common denominator but to push things forward,” the official stated. “Many people argue we are in 1938 or 1939. It’s not the time to hide behind processes. European leaders keep calling for more Ukraine aid, and it’s time for deeds, not just words.”
The Jury is Still Out
This marks a tumultuous beginning for the former Estonian prime minister, who took over the EEAS amid proposals to cut its staffing and funding.
Representing a small nation (with a population of 1.4 million, Estonia is smaller than Paris) and hailing from a liberal party that performed poorly in recent EU elections, Kallas finds herself an outsider in a bloc increasingly led by conservative leaders, where figures like French President Emmanuel Macron and Germany’s Chancellor-to-be Friedrich Merz are setting the pace for defense policy.
The failure of Kallas’ plan coincided with a canceled meeting in late February with U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who abruptly canceled the meeting in Washington, D.C. A fifth EU diplomat and a former senior EU official concurred that Kallas did not adequately prepare for the meeting by providing a clear deliverable to the U.S. side.
“She went with her hands in her pockets,” remarked the former senior EU official, a claim Kallas’ spokesperson contested, asserting that the meeting had been confirmed and was “well-prepared.”
Then came the controversial remarks by Vance and U.S. President Donald Trump during an Oval Office meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Following the widespread shock at the harsh comments directed at Zelenskyy, Kallas tweeted that “the free world needs a new leader” — a statement that resonated with many in Europe but frustrated nations intent on maintaining a rapport with the Trump administration.
“Most countries don’t want to inflame things with the United States,” a sixth diplomat noted. “Saying the free world needs a new leader just isn’t what most leaders wanted to put out there.”
While it is still early in her tenure, some diplomats acknowledge that much can change rapidly in Brussels.
“The jury is still out,” a senior EU diplomat concluded.
