EU’s Kallas Jokes She’ll Be “Very Smart” by End of Term

By Staff, Agencies

EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas said she expects to be “very smart” by the end of her term, citing her extensive reading habits.

Kallas made the comment at a press conference on Thursday after a journalist offered her a book on Kurdish history by Masoud Barzani, the first president of Iraq’s autonomous Kurdistan region.

“You know, my reading list is quite long,” she said. “I am not telling you what I am reading right now, but it is also about the history of different regions. So, by the end, when I finish this job, I will be very smart.”

The remark comes amid recent developments in Syria, where Syrian Kurds, previously US proxies in the war that ousted President Bashar Assad, suffered a defeat from forces of the new US-backed Turkey-allied government seeking to reintegrate the country.

Kallas, a former Estonian prime minister, has previously shared that her reading interests include works by Margaret Thatcher, Tony Blair, and Henry Kissinger, histories of intelligence operations and regional conflicts, and a biography of Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky.