Diplomat Jaap Ora joins Isamaa and seeks parliament seat
Wednesday 28th October 2026 on 11:30 in
Estonia
Veteran Estonian and European foreign-service diplomat Jaap Ora is joining the Isamaa party and will run in the March 2027 parliamentary elections, ERR reports.
Ora said he supported Isamaa’s focus on a strong economy, improving government and a robust foreign and security policy. He said the party had a clear policy of ensuring a strong Estonian nation-state within a strong European Union and NATO.
Ora has worked as a diplomat for 25 years. He is currently a visiting professor of international politics at the University of Tartu’s Johan Skytte Institute of Political Studies.
“Estonia today needs a change of course,” Ora said. He argued that decision-makers had developed a sense of infallibility, that politics was operating only from the top down and that many people did not understand where the country was heading.
He said Estonia needed a more flexible and intelligent foreign policy to increase its influence and room for manoeuvre, and to address security risks more effectively. He also called for clearer positions on how to defend shared European security principles, including state sovereignty, territorial integrity and the right of each country to decide its own security arrangements.
Isamaa chairman Urmas Reinsalu said Estonia’s foreign policy should be free of domestic political intrigue, adding that Ora had promoted this approach during his diplomatic career. Ora said foreign policy needed substantive positions and a clear understanding of how to defend them alongside like-minded countries.
Ora drew public attention in November 2025 during President Alar Karis’s state visit to Kazakhstan. According to the article, Ora, then an Estonian ambassador, advised Karis to depart from Estonia’s official foreign-policy line and remove sharp passages about Russia’s aggression and the war in Ukraine from speeches.
Ora later said he had been forced to leave his position, while the Foreign Ministry presented his departure as voluntary. The dispute led to a public confrontation with Foreign Minister Margus Tsahkna. Ora challenged his removal in court, where the case is awaiting consideration.