The EU’s High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, Kaja Kalas, is facing a lot of criticism in her first months in office, while Brussels officials are mostly complaining that she has continued to “behave like a prime minister,” sources told Politiko.
During a visit to Kiev shortly after taking office in December, Kalas announced in X reported that “the European Union wants Ukraine to win this war,” and some EU officials said they felt uncomfortable that the head of the European External Action Service, on her first day in office, was giving herself the freedom to “step over what was considered the rhetoric set for more than two years of war in Ukraine,” the Brussels portal points out.
“Kalas is still behaving like a prime minister,” said an EU diplomat, who asked not to be named, referring to her previous position as Estonia’s prime minister.
This source and nine other diplomats and EU officials have told Politiko of a “series of mistakes” during Kaja Kala’s first months in office, from making important proposals that had no support to taking too many liberties in foreign policy statements.
“As you listen to it, it sounds like we are at war with Russia, which is not the EU line,” an EU representative said.
Another remark concerns her proposal, following the Munich Security Conference in February, that EU countries provide billions of euros in emergency aid to Ukraine, after the US has cut off aid, the Belgian portal reported.
The Estonian politician, in a two-page document published on Sunday evening, asked the 27-member Union to find at least 1.5 million pieces of artillery ammunition, among other demands. Two diplomats, from Eastern and Northern Europe, pointed out that Kalas failed to win support from major countries such as France before presenting her proposal.
Another thing that diplomats hold against Kalas is the last-minute cancellation of the meeting between the head of European diplomacy and US Secretary of State Marco Rubio in Washington at the end of February, due to, as they put it, poor preparation of the meeting with the American side.
