Siim Kallas

Siim Kallas (October 2, 1948 – August 22, 2026) was an Estonian politician who served as Prime Minister of Estonia from 2002 to 2003 and as a European Commissioner from 2004 to 2014.

From 1972 to 1990 Kallas was a member of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. He worked in the finance ministry of Estonian SSR and was the director of the Estonian branch of State Labor Savings Banks System in 1986–1989. In 1987, Kallas was one of the authors of the IME plan for self-managing Estonia with Tiit Made, Edgar Savisaar, and Mikk Titma. The plan proposed to make Estonia economically independent from the Soviet Union – adopting a market economy and establishing Estonia's own currency and tax system. Kallas was the chief editor of Rahva Hääl, the official newspaper of the Communist Party of Estonia, in 1989–1991. He was elected a member of the Congress of People's Deputies of the Soviet Union in the 1989 Soviet Union legislative election, the first partially free elections in the Soviet Union.

After Estonia restored its independence in 1991, Kallas was appointed the President of the Bank of Estonia, which at the time had only 11 employees. Within a year a coherent structure of the bank was set up and on 20 June 1992, Estonia's own currency, the kroon, was back in circulation for the first time since 1941.