Annika Arras to run for parliament with Reform Party

Business executive and political expert Annika Arras will run in Estonia’s parliamentary elections on the Reform Party list, ERR reported Tuesday. She says she wants to change political culture within the party and at Toompea, and bring fresh thinking to public debate.

“I like politics, but I don’t like the way politics is done in Estonia today. I want to change it,” Arras wrote to party members.

Arras said she had spent much of her career helping others enter politics and win voters’ trust, but had concluded it was time to do the same herself. “If I have such strong convictions about the kind of Estonia I want to live in, it is no longer enough to persuade others or comment from the sidelines,” she said.

She added that she could not be indifferent to the Reform Party’s future. “It is easy to condemn the party’s current state. It is much harder to try to understand it, but I choose the latter. I hope my decision will encourage others to do the same,” Arras said.

Arras has more than 20 years of experience in strategic communications. For the past decade, she built and led the consulting company Miltton New Nordics in Estonia and Latvia. She stepped down as its chief executive in September and left its board in November.

She has advised civil society organisations, liberal democratic parties and politicians in more than 20 countries. Arras has also launched programmes to increase women’s representation in decision-making in business and politics, including the international women’s political leadership academy Alliance of Her.

Arras serves on the board of the Sustainable Business Association (KELL), which works to promote responsible business in Estonia, and on the council of the Network of Estonian Nonprofit Organizations, which advises civil society groups on advocacy. She will step away from both organisations as she enters politics.

Before starting her business, Arras spent more than a decade helping shape the Reform Party’s ideas and run election campaigns, supporting Siim Kallas, Andrus Ansip and Taavi Rõivas.

Other people who have recently joined the Reform Party and announced plans to run in the elections include musician and Ukraine supporter Ruslan Trochynskyi, Minister of Economic Affairs and Industry Liina Vahtras, former Peipsiääre rural municipality mayor Piibe Koemets, and Anzelika Gomozova, who served as Setomaa’s cultural leader from 2022 to 2023.