Lauristin announced this step already during the campaign leading up to the 2017 local elections on Oct. 15. The election in Estonia’s second-largest city was won by the Reform Party, who are now about to enter into coalition negotiations with the Center Party.

Reform gained enough seats on the council to be able to do with a single coalition partner. Up to the elections, Reform, Center, and the Social Democrats ran the city together, now it looks like Lauristin’s party will be in opposition.

Still, Lauristin is coming back: “I’ve already burned my bridges,” she told BNS on Monday. She added that she made up her mind already during the campaign.

She will have to wait a little longer before she can resign, as the results of the Tartu election haven’t been announced officially, and Lauristin is planning to give her election to the city council as the reason for her resignation. “Then I’ll have three days to officially notify the management of the European Parliament about my resignation,” she said.

Lauristin said she notified her group in the European Parliament, the Progressive Alliance of Socialists & Democrats (S&D), as soon as she made the decision to run in local elections. She is also planning to spend more time on teaching at the University of Tartu.

In the election on Oct. 15, Lauristin got 1,888 personal votes, which makes her the second most popular politician with the city’s voters behind mayor Urmas Klaas (Reform), who got 4,699 votes.