Estonia's Prime Minister Kaja Kallas steps down to become EU's top diplomat

HELSINKI (AP) — Estonia’s Prime Minister Kaja Kallas has stepped down as the leader of the Baltic country to become the foreign policy chief of the European Union later this year.

Kallas, Estonia’s first female prime minister, handed in her formal resignation to President Alar Karis during a brief meeting at the Presidential Palace in the capital, Tallinn, on Monday.

Estonia under Kallas, 47, has been one of Europe’s most vocal backers of Ukraine following the full-scale Russian invasion in February 2022. She replaces Josep Borrell of Spain, who has served as the EU foreign policy chief since 2019.

Summing up Kallas’ 3 1/2 years at the helm of the nation of 1.3 million, Karis said in a statement that “it has been a time full of crises, the milestones (such as) the coronavirus, the economic recession and the war in Europe, when Russia destroyed our previous security picture with its aggression in Ukraine”.

The prime minister’s move automatically triggered the resignation of Kallas’ three-party coalition Cabinet, made up of her center-right Reform Party, the Social Democratic Party and the liberal Estonia 200 party. It will continue as a caretaker government until the new Cabinet is sworn in, most likely in early August.

In the last meeting of the outgoing Cabinet on Monday, Kallas underscored her government’s efforts to boost the security of Estonia, a NATO member that neighbors Russia.

“We have invested more in national defense than ever before and increased the annual defense budget to 1.4 billion euros (about $1.5 billion), which is 3% of GDP,” Kallas said, adding that in the past two years, the state defense budget has increased by nearly 70%. “These decisions help to ensure that Estonia is firmly protected and a safe place to live.”

The Reform Party announced on June 29 that it chose party veteran and Climate Minister Kristen Michal as the prime minister candidate to replace Kallas who represented Estonia at a NATO summit in Washington last week. Under Kallas' leadership, Reform scored an overwhelming victory in the 2023 general election and holds a mandate to the prime minister post.

The Cabinet's composition is likely to remain the same but Michal, who is set to succeed Kallas also as the Reform Party's chair, is currently holding talks with both the Social Democrats and the Estonia 200 to revise the current 4-year government program the three parties had originally agreed last year.

Michal’s nomination for Estonia's top job will have to be approved by Karis and the 101-seat parliament, or Riigikogu, where the coalition holds a comfortable majority. He has been serving as the minister for climate affairs since April last year. The 49-year-old former economics and justice minister has been active in the Reform Party, Estonia’s key political establishment, since the late 1990s.

Michal is known for a long and acclaimed political career focused on Estonia’s internal affairs but lacks international experience — almost the complete opposite of Kallas who has excelled in international arenas but was clearly out of her comfort zone when it came to domestic politics, leading to a major dip in her popularity among Estonians over the past year.

Estonia's Prime Minister Kaja Kallas smiles during her arrival at the NATO summit in Washington, Wednesday, July 10, 2024. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke)

Estonia's Prime Minister Kaja Kallas smiles during her arrival at the NATO summit in Washington, Wednesday, July 10, 2024. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke)

Estonia's Prime Minister Kaja Kallas speaking to members of the media at the NATO summit in Washington, Wednesday, July 10, 2024. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke)

Estonia's Prime Minister Kaja Kallas speaks during her arrival at the NATO summit in Washington, Thursday, July 11, 2024. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein)

Estonia's Prime Minister Kaja Kallas prepares to speak during her arrival at the NATO summit in Washington, Thursday, July 11, 2024. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein)

Estonia's Prime Minister Kaja Kallas speaks during her arrival at the NATO summit in Washington, Thursday, July 11, 2024. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein)

NEW YORK (AP) — Fortnite says it's now unavailable on Apple's iOS globally because the tech giant blocked a bid to rerelease the popular video game for iPhone users in the U.S. and Europe — marking the latest twist in a yearslong feud.

Apple pulled Epic Games-owned Fortnite from its app store back in 2020, just two years after the widely-popular, multiplayer survival game had launched on iOS and garnered millions of users. iPhone players in the U.S. have been locked out since, although Apple users in the EU had been able to download the game through an alternative store over the last nine months.

Following years of a tense litigation, a recent court ruling was set to clear the way for Fortnite to finally return to iOS users in the U.S., too. But the video game said early Friday that a move from Apple has prevented that — and, as a result, Fortnite says it's now dark on iOS globally.

“Apple has blocked our Fortnite submission so we cannot release to the U.S. App Store or to the Epic Games Store for iOS in the European Union," Fortnite wrote on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter. “Sadly, Fortnite on iOS will be offline worldwide until Apple unblocks it."

In a statement sent to The Associated Press, Apple said it had asked Epic Sweden to resubmit the app update “without including the U.S. storefront of the App Store so as not to impact Fortnite in other geographies.” Sweden is where Epic’s developer account for its alternative app store is based.

But, Apple added, it "did not take any action to remove the live version of Fortnite from alternative distribution marketplaces.”

Epic did not immediately respond to a request for further comment.

In the U.S., Epic filed an antitrust lawsuit against Apple back in 2020, alleging the technology trendsetter was illegally using its power to gouge game makers. After a monthlong trial in 2021, U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers ruled against most of Epic’s claims, but ordered Apple to loosen its previously-exclusive control over the payments made for in-app commerce and allow links to alternative options in the U.S. for the first time — threatening to undercut sizable commissions that Apple had been collecting from in-app transactions for over a decade.

After exhausting an appeal that went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, Apple last year introduced a new system that opened the door for links to alternative payment options while still imposing a 27% commission on in-app transactions executed outside its own system.

Epic fired back by alleging Apple was thumbing its nose at the legal system, reviving another round of court hearings that lasted nearly a year before Gonzalez Rogers delivered a stinging rebuke last month — which held Apple in civil contempt and banned the company from collecting any commission on alternative payment systems.

That ruling cleared the way for Epic to finally return to the iPhone app store in the U.S., a reinstatement the video game maker was anticipating before Apple’s latest move.

Fortnite's availability in the EU, meanwhile, is under an alternative store for iPhone users — now called the Epic Games Store. Apple cleared the way for this last year under new regulatory pressures. Prior to Friday, Fortnite and other Epic games had been available for download on iPhones using this store in the EU since August 2024.

Before the companies' prolonged legal battle, Epic launched Fortnite on iOS in April 2018. Between then and its August 2020 removal, 116 million users accessed Fortnite on iOS devices, company filings note — raking in a daily average of about 2.5 million players, which represented about 10% of Fortnite's total daily traffic at the time.

Liedtke reported from San Francisco.

FILE - Shoppers look at Apple products in the Apple Store at the Walden Galleria in Buffalo, NY, on Saturday, Nov. 30, 2024. (AP Photo/Gene J. Puskar, File)