The center-right Reform Party of Prime Minister Kaja Kallas, one of Europe’s most outspoken supporters of Ukraine, overwhelmingly won the Baltic country’s general election, while a far-right populist challenger lost seats in a vote that focused on national security and the economy.
Preliminary returns from a completed ballot count showed the Reform Party, the senior partner in the outgoing three-party coalition government, received 31.2 percent of the vote — the biggest share in Sunday’s election.
That translates into 37 seats at Estonia’s 101-seat Parliament, or Riigikogu, an increase of three seats from the 2019 election.
“This result, which is not final yet, will give us a strong mandate to put together a good government,” Kallas told her party colleagues and jubilant supporters at a hotel in the capital, Tallinn.
Kallas, prime minister since 2021, faced a challenge from the far-right populist EKRE party, which seeks to limit the Baltic nation’s exposure to Russia’s war in Ukraine, and blames the current government for Estonia’s high inflation rate.