Taavi Rõivas – progressive Premier
Profile of Estonia’s prime minister.
In the past 12 months, there has been an injection of youth into the European Council. Xavier Bettel became prime minister of Luxembourg last December while still aged just 40. Matteo Renzi became prime minister of Italy in February at the age of 39. In June, Alexander Stubb succeeded Jyrki Katainen as the prime minister of Finland, at the age of 45. Charles Michel became prime minister of Belgium in October at the age of 38. Freshest-faced of all is Taavi Rõivas, who in March became prime minister of Estonia at the age of 34.
Youthful he may be, but Rõivas is not short of self-belief. He conducts himself with a calm assurance that betrays no doubt as to his right to be around the European Council table with the likes of Angela Merkel and François Hollande.
It helps that Estonia, which has a population of 1.3 million, has no hang-ups about appointing young leaders. Mart Laar was only 32 when he became prime minister in 1992 and was still under 40 when he came back for a second go. In EU circles, such youth has been unusual, but Rõivas has turned that to his advantage. He suggests that displacing Renzi as the youngest prime minister made them “instantly good friends”, even if they are not naturally political allies. Whereas Renzi is from Italy’s centre-left, Rõivas comes from Estonia’s free-market liberal tradition.
Political ambition emerged when he was in high school. “For young people who have a lot of energy and idealism, it was only logical to choose this [political career],” he told European Voice. He was only a 12 year-old when the Soviet occupation of Estonia ended in 1991, but he says: “Back then, it was not self-evident that Estonia would emerge as a successful country.”
He was one of the first members of the youth division of the Estonian Reform Party, which was called the “Joala club” after the late Estonian singer and musician Jaak Joala, whose songs they played at their meetings. Rõivas became its first elected chairman in 1998. His political success has been built on the stable foundation of the Reform Party, which has been a constant feature of every national government since 1999 – the first elections in which he was allowed to vote.
He grew up in Tallinn but chose to go to university in the southern Estonian town of Tartu. While still at university, where he studied international economics and marketing, Rõivas became an adviser to the then justice minister Märt Rask.
He went on to work as an adviser to the minister of population affairs Paul-Eerik Rummo (2003-04) and to Prime Minister Andrus Ansip (2005-07). He says now that those experiences made him “more prepared [for the prime ministerial job] than anyone else before”. He adds: “There was nothing new to me.”
In between his adviser jobs, he spent a year in the private sector, in an IT company, but says he was drawn back to politics because there were “bigger things” to achieve.
Curriculum vitae
1979: Born in Tallinn
1998: Joined the Estonian Reform Party
1999-02: Adviser to minister of justice Märt Rask
2002: Degree in international economics and marketing from the University of Tartu
2002-03: Account manager, AS IT Grupp
2003-04: Adviser to minister of population affairs Paul-Eerik Rummo
2004-05: Elder of the Haabersti city district of Tallinn
2005-07: Adviser to prime minister and Estonian Reform Party leader Andrus Ansip
2005-07: Member of Tallinn city council
2007-12: Member of the Riigikogu, the national parliament. Member of the social affairs committee (2007-09), then chairmen of the finance committee (2009-11). Re-elected in 2011; chairman of the EU affairs committee, member of the finance committee.
2012-14: Minister of social affairs
2014 –: Prime minister of Estonia and leader of the Estonian Reform Party
In 2012, when a ministerial resignation prompted a reshuffle, Ansip brought Rõivas into government in his own right, as minister of social affairs – a post that is traditionally seen as one of the most important in the national government.
The social dimension complemented his experience in financial and economic affairs. “It completed my profile,” he said. His most notable achievement as a minister was the reform of employment legislation for people with disabilities, a controversial law because of difficulties in its implementation. It was approved this month by the Riigikogu, the national parliament.
Clearly, Rõivas enjoys the confidence of Ansip. Nevertheless, it was something of a surprise that, when Ansip announced that he was stepping down after nine years as government leader in order to seek a career in EU politics, Rõivas became his successor after Siim Kallas had withdrawn his candidacy. Argo Ideon, journalist at Postimees newspaper, says: “The whole matter was decided in the course of a few hours.”
What the Reform Party had opted for was a fresh-faced communicator who, in accordance with external preconceptions about Estonia, is a digitally-savvy liberal.
The new prime minister gives the impression of being at ease with himself and of finding most things easy. He was not disconcerted when he abruptly lost his finance minister, Jürgen Ligi, who was credited for steering Estonia through its financial crisis. Ligi had to resign over derogatory comments made about Jevgeni Ossinovski, the education and research minister. He has also lost his foreign minister Urmas Paet, who opted to take up the seat in the European Parliament that had been vacated by Ansip. But both these moves have left Rõivas more in control of his own party.
He replaced the veteran politicians with female candidates: Maris Lauri (48), his economic adviser, a political novice, took the finance post, and Keit Pentus-Rosimannus (38) switched from the environment to the post of foreign minister. The swift decisions were evidence of pragmatism and progressiveness and they pre-empted any further tension between the government partners, just four months ahead of the next parliamentary elections.
But Raimo Poom, head of international news at Estonian daily newspaper Eesti Päevaleht, says Rõivas has yet to show himself as a leader capable of handling a major crisis. Up to now, the most difficult issues (the detention of an Estonian security officer by Russia and increasing tensions at the Russian border) have been dealt with by ministers. He says: “He has not really done something wrong, but he has not done something extremely spectacular either.”
Ideon says that Rõivas sees himself as “the government’s PR-man”, like his Finnish counterpart Alexander Stubb. “He makes an effort to project an image of a modern prime minister, keen on tweeting about himself greeting successful businessmen, using photo opportunities with world leaders and posing with Estonian troops.”
Whereas several of his predecessors had a reputation for being outspoken and blunt, Rõivas is more deliberate and measured in his public pronouncements. It takes more to provoke him: Estonian observers are divided over whether this is a generational difference, or simply a question of character.
While coping with his busy schedule, he tries to do as much running as possible. In September, he completed his third marathon, in Tallinn. He admits that his time of four hours, three minutes and 25 seconds cannot compare with the likes of Stubb, who ran the Berlin marathon the same month in three hours, 17 minutes and 53 seconds. “A prime minister needs to adapt his training to his work schedule,” he says. When he is in Brussels to attend the European Council meetings, he fits in a few laps of the Parc de Bruxelles beforehand.
Rõivas’s partner is Luisa Värk, a singer, who was runner-up in 2007 in the first season of Estonian Pop Idol, the televised singing contest. He acknowledges that the prime ministership is not conducive to the domestic life of a young father: “My five-year-old daughter does not like that I travel so much and that my working days are long.”
But Rõivas is intent on staying in power. His predecessor, Ansip, to whom he still speaks “every now and then” broke with the Estonian tradition of short-lived govern-ments, and lasted nine years before the public showed signs of restlessness. Rõivas’s immediate aim is to be more than a one-year wunderkind. A general election is due in March, which he hopes will give him his own electoral mandate. If he does succeed in putting together a government coalition, with a four-year programme, it will include Estonia’s preparations for its presidency of the EU’s Council of Ministers in 2018.