Incumbent Martin Helme was reelected EKRE chair with 347 votes at Sunday's congress.

Elected deputy chairs of the party were Mart Helme with 323, Siim Pohlak with 298 and Evelin Poolamets with 216 votes.

Elected to the party board on Sunday were Arvo Aller, Rain Epler, Helle-Moonika Helme, Mart Järvik, Mart Kallas, Kert Kingo, Rene Kokk, Mati Kuklane, Kristjan Moora, Anti Poolamets and Urmas Reitelmann.

In his speech at the congress, Helme said that in order to improve life in Estonia, the green transition should decisively be rejected, which is fraud built on one big lie; the priority shouldn't be to combat but rather adapt to climate warming. He also believes the country should swiftly abandon the construction of solar parks and wind farms and reduce regulations, which would provide the opportunity for tax cuts.

"In energy policy, instead of this insane green transition, we need to implement EKRE's plan to drive electricity prices back down to three cents per kilowatt (kW)," he said.

The party chair likewise promised that when EKRE is in the government, diesel prices will return to €0.99 per liter. In addition to excise duties, the VAT hike and land tax hikes need to be reversed, income tax cut and car tax abolished – this, he says, will stimulate economic growth.

Helme wants to fight the banks to prevent predatory policies, preserve small rural schools, expand four-lane highways as well as cancel the Rail Baltica railway project, noting that funding for all of this will come from canceling the green transition, Rail Baltica, the tax reform aimed at eliminating the tax hump as well as aid to Ukraine.

"We'll halve the funding being thrown in the Ukrainian corruption pit and once again save several hundred millions," he said. "If we implement these simple measures, there will be money left over both for national defense as well as we can easily further cut taxes."

The EKRE chief also underscored the need to tighten Estonia's immigration rules, and advocated for an immigration quota of zero.

"We're not interested in what Brussels says; we'll keep foreigners out and our own people in!" he declared, highlighting Slavic immigration as a particular concern.

"They may call themselves Ukrainians, and I suppose the majority of them indeed come from the combat zone that is eastern Ukraine, but they speak Russian, and a very large majority of them echo [Russian regime leader Vladimir] Putin's rhetoric," Helme said. "The fact is that in the span of two years, Kaja Kallas' government has carried out greater Russification than either Karl Vaino, Joseph Stalin or Emperor Alexander III managed to."

Which is why he believes that Estonia should send immigrants from recent years back home while simultaneously frantically focusing efforts on increasing the birth rate among Estonians.

"Dear national conservatives – I am occasionally asked whether EKRE still supports Ukraine," he said. "Of course we do. But above all, EKRE supports Estonia. Estonia first!"

Helme also criticized Estonia's current defense policy and participation in missions in Afghanistan, Iraq, Mali and Lebanon.

"Under the leadership of Western lackeys, our security has been steered into a worse state than it was in 1939," he asserted. "Back then, we had both cannons and ammunition, but we had no fifth column within [the country]."

Before boldly fighting for survival, Estonia must just as boldly fight for peace, the party chair said, and find diplomatic solutions rather than escalate.

"Our diplomacy must be focused on persuading major Western countries of two things: first, the need to end the war in Ukraine, but second, and much more importantly, that we not be sold out," Helme emphasized.

"Yes, precisely so," he continued. "We know them. Look at the signals from Ukraine. Western countries are getting ready to sell out there. Our job is to ensure that the Baltics aren't also part of the deal. That is where every effort should be made, not on bringing the war to our doorstep, so that Estonia can have its own Buchas, Mariupols, Bakhmuts, Avdiivkas. And so I'll also say as Mart [Helme] did: we are in favor of peace!"

Helme likewise denounced the electoral system as one big scam, and criticized policies "forcing people to inject themselves with substances harmful to one's health that were falsely claimed to be vaccines," but also the "globalist" European Union, and called on everyone to resist such measures.

Back to greatness with a firm hand

In his speech at Sunday's party congress, Helme recalled what he had promised at last year's congress: "So long as I am leading the Conservative People's Party of Estonia, we will not start supporting the homosexual revolution, the green transition, forced injections, the physical and mental ritual sacrifice of children to the evil cult of transgenderism; nor will we start agreeing to the Russification of Estonia or Estonia's disarmament, even if it is done shouting 'Slava Ukraini!'"

He likewise recalled his commitment that the party would not become eager instigators of World War III, would not ardently offer itself as a battleground in this war and would not agree to the establishment of EU supremacy over Estonian sovereignty or Klaus Schwab and the World Economic Forum's recommendation to eat bugs instead of meat and walk or cycle instead of driving cars.

"It's precisely for this platform, this principled and fighting stance that I sought the congress' mandate and received it," Helme highlighted. "90 percent of congress delegates endorsed that this is precisely how we should continue to proceed."

He attributed the infighting that had broken out in the party to the fact that a network had been set up within the party tasked with either domesticating EKRE so that it would not interfere with liberal-globalist plans being drawn up, or, failing that, paralyzing, tearing it apart and tearing it down from within.

"These so-called advocates for democracy and setters of a new course were unequivocally antidemocratic in their demands, wanting to be given power and decision-making power they had never sought from or been granted by the party congress," the EKRE chair said, calling it treachery.

He justified the expulsion of party members ahead of the congress by arguing that if they had left "liberalizers-globalizers" within their ranks and these individuals would have been on the party board, in its parliamentary group and on its council, continuing to leak defamation to the media and stoking up resentment, then they would have later had to face local elections in a weaker position than they have in the last ten years.

"Now we have the big job ahead of us of making EKRE truly great again, and that can only be achieved precisely on the foundation of a strong worldview and clear ideology," Helme stressed. "And maybe a leader with a firm hand will help."

Helme: Estonia doesn't need more mainstream version of EKRE

In an interview with ERR ahead of Sunday's party congress, Helme said that the ex-EKRE members who have announced plans to form a new political party had wanted to turn EKRE more mainstream and make it more like Isamaa, but Estonia already has parties like that and hardly needs yet one more.

Commenting on Saturday's decision by an initiative group consisting of members that had been kicked out of or quit EKRE to establish a new party, he said that building up a party is no easy task.

"Just starting a new party because [someone] had a great idea – you can give it a try, but it isn't that simple," the EKRE chair said. "As for this so-called political landscape, one has to understand what the platform was that they had also tried to convert our party with, and that platform was, let's say, mainstreaming – being more like Isamaa, talking nice, but, God forbid, never doing anything that might upset or anger anyone."

He noted that such parties already exist in Estonia, adding that he's not sure who needs yet another one or what niche a watered-down version of EKRE would fill.

"The original is always better than a copy," Helme said.

Asked whether he's considered, in light of everything, where himself may have gone wrong, the EKRE chief replied that the party is always interested in active and hardworking people, and seeing the rage and hostility that have now been pouring out of some longtime members, he has wondered where it all came from and what's behind it.

"I have no better explanation for this than that [they] have actually long since wanted to be in some other kind of party than ours, and that has been suppressed, so to speak, inside them and now it's all being unleashed," Helme said.

He considered it a good thing that following these departures, the prolonged and intense undermining going on within the party – while it didn't show – will dissipate, making EKRE now undoubtedly Estonia's most unified and powerful political party.

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