Sandra Kalniete


Sandra Kalniete is a Latvian politician, author and diplomat. She served as Minister for Foreign Affairs of Latvia from 2002 to 2004 and as European Commissioner for Agriculture, Rural Development and Fisheries in 2004. Since 2009, she has served as Member of the European Parliament for the European People's Party.
She is currently a member of the Committee on Foreign Affairs and a substitute member of the Committee on Agriculture and Rural Development.
Additionally she is a member on the Delegation for relations with the countries of Southeast Asia and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations and a substitute member on the Delegation to the EU-Ukraine Parliamentary Cooperation Committee and on the Delegation to the Euronest Parliamentary Assembly.
After her reelection in 2014, she became Vice-Chair of the Group of the European People's Party in the European Parliament.
Kalniete is also the chairperson of the Reconciliation of European Histories Group, an all-party group in the European Parliament involved in promoting the Prague Process. The group includes 40 MEPs from across the political spectrum including the European People's Party, the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats, the Greens, and the Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats.
She has previously served as Ambassador to the United Nations, France and UNESCO. Beside her native Latvian language, she is also fluent in English, French and Russian.
WWW Official Site𝕏 kalnieteFB kalniete.sandra

Early life and education

Kalniete was born in, in Russia's Siberian Tomsk Oblast, where her family had been deported by the Soviet secret police during the country's occupation of the Baltic states, for use as slave labour. Her mother Ligita Kalniete was first deported together with her mother and father in 1941, after which Ligita returned in 1948, before being deported again in 1949 as part of Operation Priboi. Her father Aivars Kalnietis was deported together with his mother in 1949 as well. Kalniete would remain in Russia until returning to Latvia at the age of five, when the family was allowed to return in 1957.
She studied art at the Latvian Academy of Art from 1977 to 1981 and worked as an art historian, publishing a book, Latvian Textile Art, in 1989.

Early career

She entered politics in 1988, during Latvia's independence movement, and was a deputy chairwoman and one of the founders of Popular Front of Latvia, the main pro-independence political organization. Kalniete graduated from the Department of Art History and Art Theory at the Art Academy of Latvia, the Institute for International Studies at the University of Leeds, The Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies — now Geneva Graduate Institute —, and has a Master of Arts from the Art Academy of Latvia. The Geneva Graduate Institute later dedicated to her a place in its .
After Latvia declared independence, Kalniete worked in Latvia's Ministry of Foreign Affairs and served as Latvia's ambassador to the UN, France and UNESCO.

Political career

Kalniete became Foreign Minister of Latvia in November 2002 and served in this position until in 2004 when she was appointed the first Latvian Commissioner of the European Union in charge of Agriculture and Fisheries.
She was not re-nominated as Latvia's EU Commissioner.
At the beginning of 2006, Kalniete joined the New Era Party. In October 2006, she was elected to the Latvian parliament. She was the 2007 candidate of the New Era Party for the post of Latvian president, before withdrawing in favor of Aivars Endziņš on 24 May 2007.
Between 2006 and 2007, Kalniete served as member of the Amato Group, a group of high-level European politicians unofficially working on rewriting the Treaty establishing a Constitution for Europe into what became known as the Treaty of Lisbon following its rejection by French and Dutch voters.
In 2008, Kalniete announced she was leaving the New Era Party. She joined the newly founded Civic Union and became the party's leader.
In the 2009 European Parliament election she was elected as a Member of the European Parliament and reelected in the 2014 European Parliament election in Latvia. She put herself forward as a potential candidate to succeed Andris Bērziņš as President of Latvia after his decision to step down in 2015.
She was reelected as a Member of the European Parliament and in the 2019 European Parliament election in Latvia.
She was mentioned as a possible candidate for the 2023 Latvian presidential election.
She was reelected once again as a Member of the European Parliament and in the 2024 European Parliament election in Latvia.

Human rights activism

Kalniete is involved in many human rights causes pertaining to totalitarian crimes. She is the chair of the Reconciliation of European Histories Group, an all-party group in the European Parliament aimed at coming to terms with the totalitarian past in many countries of Europe.
In 2004, she argued that "behind the Iron Curtain the Soviet regime continued to commit genocide against the peoples of Eastern Europe and, indeed, against its own people the two totalitarian regimes—Nazism and Communism—were equally criminal." She elaborated on this in 2006 when she came up with death counts for the two regimes, pointing out that the Soviet Union killed around 94.5 million people.

Publications

She is an author of four books:Latviešu tekstilmāksla, 1989.Es lauzu, tu lauzi, mēs lauzām. Viņi lūza, a book about Latvia's independence movement, published in 2000.Ar balles kurpēm Sibīrijas sniegos, a book about the deportation of her family to Siberia during the Joseph Stalin era and her family's efforts to return to their home country, first published in 2001.
  • "Prjaņiks. Debesmannā. Tiramisū.", Rīga, Zelta grauds, 2012.
The French translation of With Dancing Shoes in Siberian Snows published in 2003 by Editions des Syrtes as En escarpins dans les neiges de Sibérie was nominated for the Documentary Book of the Month for December by the readers of Elle magazine. Since its publishing it has been translated into more than ten languages.

Translations

The book Ar balles kurpēm Sibīrijas sniegos, Riga, Latvia: Atēna, 2001 has been translated into several languages:
  • Albanian: "Këpucë balerine mbi dëborën siberiane". Transl.: Durim Taçe. Skopje, Macedonia: Shkupi.
  • French: En escarpins dans les neiges de Sibérie. Transl.: Velta Skujina. Paris, France: Editions des Syrtes, 2003.
  • German: Mit Ballschuhen im sibirischen Schnee. Transl.: Matthias Knoll. München, Germany: Herbig Verlag, 2005.
  • Italian: Scarpette da ballo nelle nevi di Siberia. Transl.: G. Weiss. Milano, Italy: Libri Scheiwiller, 2005.
  • Japanese: Dansu shûzu de yuki no Shiberia e. Transl.: Ayumi Kurosawa. Tôkyô: Shinhyôron, 2014.
  • Czech: V plesových střevíčkách sibiřským sněhem. Transl.: Michal Škrabal. Praha, Czech Republic: Lubor Kasal, 2005.
  • Swedish: Med högklackade skor i Sibiriens snö. Transl.: Juris Kronbergs. Stockholm, Sweden: Atlantis, 2005.
  • English: With Dance Shoes in Siberian Snows. Transl.: Margita Gailītis. Riga, Latvia: The Latvian Occupation Museum Association, 2006.
  • Russian: В бальных туфельках по сибирским снегам. Riga, Latvia: Atēna, 2006.
  • Finnish: Tanssikengissä Siperiaan. Transl.: Hilkka Koskela. Helsinki, Finland: Werner Söderström Osakeyhtiö, 2007.
  • Dutch: Op dansschoenen in de Siberische sneeuw. Transl.: Marijke Koekoek. Amsterdam: Uitgeverij van Gennep, 2006.
  • Arabic: Cairo, Egypt: Sphinx Agency for Arts and Literature, 2009.
  • Spanish: Con zapatos de fiesta en las nieves de Siberia. Transl.: Jānis Kleinbergs; text editor: María Maestro; iluustrator: Agnese Čemme, Lasītava, 2019
  • Tamil: ஸைபீரியப் பனியில் நடனக் காலணியுடன். Transl: C. S. Lakshmi, Kalachuvadu Publications, 2019.
Hungarian: Báli cipőben Szibériába, Transl. Béla Jávorszky, Magyar Napló Kiadó, Budapest,2021, ISBN 978-963-541-041-5

Career experience and political activities

Awards

Board-member/affiliations