Talking Europe speaks to Kersti Kaljulaid, who was the first and only female president of Estonia, from 2016 to 2021. Her name has been linked to the top job in NATO, as Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg is expected to step down this autumn. We discuss her potential interest in the job, as well as her view on the current levels of support for Ukraine, both in NATO and the European Union.
The former Estonian president implies that it's time for a leader from the Baltics or Eastern Europe to lead NATO – they have never had a secretary general – and pays tribute to the incumbent, Jens Stoltenberg, who has been in the job for nearly nine years.
"I'm quite sure that each and every ex-president, current president, current prime minister, of eastern European countries, would really appreciate this opportunity," Kaljulaid says. "But I also have to say that Jens Stoltenberg's shoes are very big ones to fill. He's been fantastic. He's been imaginative. He's been able to find ways to show NATO's force when NATO was really in financial difficulty and nobody was spending enough. The EFP (Enhanced Forward Presence) was a stroke of genius, and relatively cheap."
On Stoltenberg's recent assertion that "Ukraine's rightful place is in NATO", and whether that's realistic, she responds: "The process takes time, but time might also be in Ukraine's favour. First, we have to win the war. Second, we have to make sure that Ukraine is ready to join the European Union. And thereafter, the discussion will come, almost automatically, 'why not NATO?'. In Estonia we always realised, the EU first, then maybe NATO. And when we first voiced our will to join NATO, many said it should not happen; it will never happen. Yet it happened. Because we realised that we are stronger together."
Asked about what she believes should be in the 11th package of sanctions on Russia, currently under discussion by EU ambassadors, Kaljulaid answers: "I'll leave it to the government of Estonia to talk about concrete elements. But I would like to stress that the sanctions, once applied, do not stay efficient, unless you really check all the time that they are properly applied, unless you make sure that they are modified constantly so that loopholes are closed."
On how NATO and the EU are adapting to the new security environment, Kaljulaid says: "We lack the capacity to produce everything that our military forces need. That's because of the 'peace dividend'. But now we have to re-adapt quickly to the situation: we have a long-term threat beside us. The sooner we re-adapt, the more positive the effect will be in Ukraine. I very often sense that, while we speak about unity and moving forward and being relatively quick, the Ukrainians measure time in lives lost. They don't disclose it, but it can't be less than one hundred per day, if you compare it to Russian losses. So they count the time differently from how we do. Common EU procurement of weapons or no common procurement; this doesn't really matter to the Ukrainians. They need us to be able to supply them. And frankly, we need to be able to do this for ourselves, maybe for the long term."
Programme produced by Sophie Samaille, Isabelle Romero and Perrine Desplats
