Ansip said that while he does not want to predict who will be elected Estonia's next president at the end of the summer, he believes Alar Karis has earned the public's trust.

"In my view, he is a worthy candidate," Andrus Ansip said.

There is currently no consensus within the Estonian Reform Party on supporting Karis. Prime Minister and Reform Party leader Kristen Michal said on Vikerraadio last week that members of the Reform Party's Riigikogu faction support different presidential candidates, including both Kersti Kaljulaid and Karis.

Ansip noted that Karis' remarks on foreign policy issues have generated controversy.

"Let's admit it, some of his statements have been ambiguous to the public. Alar Karis himself has certainly known what he wanted to say, but his interviews have sparked controversy and it has not been very favorable controversy," Ansip said.

"People are emotional, while it is also a rational argument that these kinds of debates have emerged and that the reaction has spread beyond Estonia. It will certainly influence some people's choices," he added.

Ansip said the debate over different candidates should definitely be public and encouraged political parties to put forward names.

"Keeping naming candidates and eventually the right one will emerge. What is bad is when a candidate comes out of silent backroom discussions," he said.

At the same time, Ansip said the Reform Party should not take a very active role in the presidential election, but should instead seek common ground with other parties.

"The Reform Party should strive to find a joint candidate and support the person who has the broadest backing from others. In other words, the Reform Party is not currently in a position where it should nominate its own presidential candidate and people should not expect that from it," Ansip said.

'Hands off pensions'

Recent polling shows support for the Estonian Reform Party has fallen to 11 percent among voters, on par with the non-parliamentary Parempoolsed.

Ansip said that support slightly above 10 percent is not yet a disaster for the Reform Party, although there is not much room left for further decline.

"If we look at who is popular according to the latest poll, Parempoolsed have also gained enormous popularity. But what are they promising? They are promising to freeze pension indexation or even freeze pensions outright, which, given inflation, in my view means cutting pensions," he said.

"The overwhelming majority of pensioners live at risk of poverty, so it certainly would not be reasonable to push them into absolute poverty. In that case, the state would have to pay more in subsistence benefits anyway because people cannot simply be left to starve to death. In other words, cutting pensions would have absolutely no positive effect on the state budget," Ansip added.

He said interfering with the pension system is not a solution for improving the country's finances.

"Parempoolsed says it directly: let's freeze pensions. Leave pensions alone. When such decisions were made in the past, they did not come out of nowhere. There was both demand and a need for them. /.../ Or the idea that we should live off the savings accumulated in the second pension pillar, so that people would receive even smaller pensions and so on. Those are certainly not solutions," Ansip said.

He also said lowering value-added tax on food products is not a solution.

"We see what kind of campaign has been launched to lower the VAT rate on food products, as if that would suddenly bring prosperity and make life wonderful for everyone. But if we were to cut the VAT rate on food products across the board to 9 percent right now, we would need €400 million. This is our country — where would we get that €400 million from? What tax would we impose? Triple the car tax? A sneaker tax? A boot tax? What tax are we going to introduce?" Ansip asked.

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